Acpi Genuineintel---intel64-family-6-model-58 [Certified | 2026]
In /proc/cpuinfo or dmesg you might see:
ACPI: SSDT 0x... 0009a (v1 GenIntel CpuPm 00003000 INTL 20091013)
Or a custom identifier the kernel uses for quirk handling.
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The string "ACPI GenuineIntel Family 6 Model 58" looks like a cryptic line of code, but it is actually the digital "birth certificate" for a specific generation of Intel processors. This identifier points to the Ivy Bridge
architecture, specifically the 3rd Generation Intel Core processors (like the popular i5-3570K or i7-3770K) released around 2012. Here is a breakdown of what this technical label tells us about a computer's "brain" and how it communicates with the rest of the system. The Breakdown of the Label
To understand this essay's subject, we have to decode the nomenclature: acpi genuineintel---intel64-family-6-model-58
This stands for Advanced Configuration and Power Interface. It is the bridge between the hardware and the operating system, allowing your software to tell the hardware when to sleep, wake up, or throttle power to save battery. GenuineIntel / Intel64:
This confirms the manufacturer and the 64-bit instruction set, which allows the computer to use more than 4GB of RAM—a standard for modern computing. Family 6, Model 58:
This is the specific "DNA" marker. In Intel’s world, Family 6 covers almost all modern microarchitectures, but (or 3A in hexadecimal) specifically identifies Ivy Bridge chips built on the 22nm process. Historical Significance
When Model 58 hit the market, it represented a "Tick+" in Intel’s famous "Tick-Tock" development cycle. It was the first time the world saw 3D Tri-Gate transistors
. Instead of being flat, transistors were built upward, allowing more of them to fit into a smaller space. This made computers faster and significantly more energy-efficient than the "Sandy Bridge" models that came before. Why It Still Matters In /proc/cpuinfo or dmesg you might see: ACPI:
Even a decade later, you will still see this string in Windows Device Manager or Linux system logs. It serves as a reminder of a period where Moore’s Law was in full swing. These processors were so robust that many are still in use today for basic office work, home servers, or budget gaming builds.
In short, "Model 58" isn't just a number; it represents the transition to the 22-nanometer era and the foundation of the power-management features we take for granted in laptops today. of these specific chips or help you troubleshoot a driver issue related to this ACPI string?
As of kernel 6.x, Ivy Bridge (model 58) is considered legacy but still supported:
If you see the malformed string on a modern kernel, it is harmless if no functional issues exist. If you’re maintaining a distribution or embedded system based on Ivy Bridge, you can safely ignore cosmetic printk anomalies.
Some hypervisors (especially buggy KVM or QEMU defaults) pass an incomplete or manually mangled ACPI processor object. The triple-dash (---) is abnormal; it likely denotes a string concatenation artifact from printk formatting or a malformed DSDT. On real Ivy Bridge hardware, you should see a clean "ACPI: GenuineIntel (Family 6 Model 58)" without dashes. Or a custom identifier the kernel uses for quirk handling
The --- in the string suggests that three separate identifiers were joined: acpi + genuineintel + intel64-family-6-model-58. This could be from:
As of 2025, Ivy Bridge (Family 6 Model 58) is over a decade old. However, millions of legacy servers, industrial PCs, and embedded systems still run this hardware. Linux kernel maintainers have not removed the debug print because it costs nothing and helps diagnose power regression for old platforms.
Newer CPUs (Skylake, Family 6 Model 94; Cascade Lake, Model 85; Alder Lake, Model 151) produce similar strings, e.g.:
acpi genuineintel---intel64-family-6-model-151
Thus, the pattern is permanent. If you are writing scripts or log parsers that match this string, use a regex like:
acpi genuineintel---intel64-family-6-model-[0-9]+
If you have ever dug through Linux kernel logs, examined /proc/cpuinfo, or tried to debug power management issues on an Intel-based system, you may have stumbled upon a cryptic string:
acpi genuineintel---intel64-family-6-model-58
At first glance, it looks like a debug output fragment or a mismatched identifier. However, this string is rich with technical meaning. It ties together three critical components of modern x86 computing: ACPI (Advanced Configuration and Power Interface), GenuineIntel (the CPU vendor string), and the Intel64 family-model-stepping encoding (Family 6, Model 58).
This article will dissect every part of this identifier, explain how it appears in system logs, what hardware it refers to, and why it matters for OS developers, power management engineers, and Linux enthusiasts.