System Management Controller

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title: "System Management Controller" type: doc version: 1 created: 2026-02-28 author: "Wikipedia contributors" status: active scope: public tags: ["products-introduced-in-2006", "macintosh-computers", "apple-inc.-hardware"] description: "Subsystem of Apple computers" topic_path: "general/products-introduced-in-2006" source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System_Management_Controller" license: "CC BY-SA 4.0" wikipedia_page_id: 0 wikipedia_revision_id: 0

::summary Subsystem of Apple computers ::

The System Management Controller (SMC) is a subsystem of Intel Macintosh computers and Apple silicon based computers. It is similar in function to the older SMU or PMU of PowerPC based Macintosh computers.

Overview

The SMC has roles in controlling thermal and power management, battery charging, fan control, Motion detector, Light sensor, sleep and wake, hibernation, and LED indicators. It also enables enforcement of the macOS End User License, allowing macOS to identify when it is running on non-Apple hardware.

SMC uses ACPI on Intel Macs and RTKIT on Apple silicon based Macs for communication.

References

References

1. "HT2368: About the SMC Firmware Updates".
2. "HT202040: About the SMC Firmware Updates".
3. (2010-08-11). "VirtualBox". [[TWiT.tv]].
4. "SMC implementation for Apple Silicon in The Linux Kernel".
5. "Switch from platform-device to acpi-device on applesmc (Linux Kernel Module).".

::callout[type=info title="Wikipedia Source"] This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page. ::