White Papers

into idle power states, thereby reducing overall power consumption. For each phase,
the operating system will allow fewer operating functions to execute.
Resiliency Mode is the final mode of which all Modern Standby systems are to
achieve. In Resiliency Mode, all software services and associated hardware devices
are put to sleep to eliminate excessive power consumption.
System Requirements
This section provides detailed information on the requirements to support Modern
Standby. In general, most behavior is focused on the configuration of the system and
ensuring that all applications, drivers, firmware, and hardware properly enter into
their independent lowest idle states. This will allow for the overall system to enter
the lowest possible power state.
As the operating system moves from one phase of Modern Standby to another, all
devices associated with the software services will be evaluated to ensure that they
can enter into their associated low power states if no additional accesses are
requried.
BIOS REQUIREMENTS
Dell configures all supported systems to be fully compliant with Modern Standby and
tests our systems and firmware to Microsoft specifications.
Dell does not allow for users to modify any Modern Standby configurations within the
BIOS setup. This includes disabling Modern Standby to utilize legacy S3 operations.
In general, the BIOS is not directly involved with Modern Standby execution. The role
of BIOS is to configure the devices connected and ensure that capabilities are
surfaced to the operating system through ACPI methods. Additionally, the BIOS will
act as a proxy for ACPI communications to the devices when operations are directed
of them.
BIOS shall enumerate support for Modern Standby by enumerating the
ACPI_S0_LOW_POWER_IDLE FADT flag within the ACPI system configuration table.
Of note, Linux supports a similar power management scheme to Modern Standby
called Suspend to Idle on releases above Ubuntu 18.04.x and RHEL 8.x
Linux details are posted at Suspend to Idle (Linux Modern Standby)
BIOS CONFIGURATION OF SYSTEM
Intel provides significant reference code for which Dell heavily leverages and
configures to expose and enumerate Modern Standby. The BIOS is also responsible