Intel 64 and IA-32 Architectures Software Developers Manual Volume 3B, System Programming Guide Part 2

Table Of Contents
20-6 Vol. 3
VIRTUAL-MACHINE CONTROL STRUCTURES
IA32_PAT (64 bits). This field is supported only on logical processors that
support either the 1-setting of the “load IA32_PAT” VM-entry control or that
of the “save IA32_PAT” VM-exit control.
IA32_EFER (64 bits). This field is supported only on logical processors that
support either the 1-setting of the “load IA32_EFER” VM-entry control or that
of the “save IA32_EFER” VM-exit control.
The register SMBASE (32 bits). This register contains the base address of the
logical processor’s SMRAM image.
20.4.2 Guest Non-Register State
In addition to the register state described in Section 20.4.1, the guest-state area
includes the following fields that characterize guest state but which do not corre-
spond to processor registers:
Activity state (32 bits). This field identifies the logical processors activity state.
When a logical processor is executing instructions normally, it is in the active
state. Execution of certain instructions and the occurrence of certain events may
cause a logical processor to transition to an inactive state in which it ceases to
execute instructions.
The following activity states are defined:
1
—0: Active. The logical processor is executing instructions normally.
—1: HLT. The logical processor is inactive because it executed the HLT
instruction.
—2: Shutdown. The logical processor is inactive because it incurred a triple
fault
2
or some other serious error.
—3: Wait-for-SIPI. The logical processor is inactive because it is waiting for a
startup-IPI (SIPI).
Future processors may include support for other activity states. Software should
read the VMX capability MSR IA32_VMX_MISC (see Appendix G.6) to determine
what activity states are supported.
Interruptibility state (32 bits). The IA-32 architecture includes features that
permit certain events to be blocked for a period of time. This field contains
information about such blocking. Details and the format of this field are given in
Table 20-3.
Pending debug exceptions (64 bits; 32 bits on processors that do not support
Intel 64 architecture). IA-32 processors may recognize one or more debug
1. Execution of the MWAIT instruction may put a logical processor into an inactive state. However,
this VMCS field never reflects this state. See Section 23.1.
2. A triple fault occurs when a logical processor encounters an exception while attempting to
deliver a double fault.