Waking up the Intel Management Engine

The Intel® AMT management engine (ME) can be placed in a sleep state depending on the host systems power state. A common default setting is that the ME is on regardless of the host systems power state (unless of course the power has been totally removed from the system).

The screen shot below provides an example of manually changing the power state of an Intel® Centrino® Pro system.

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When enterprise provisioning - the power policy of the Intel® AMT profile can also set. See image below

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This raises a question - how does ME wake-up occur? Three methods to wake-up the ME

• Wake-on-LAN (WoL) is supported by the NIC - this utilizes a UDP "magic packet", with the NIC retaining power to receive packets.
• Direct IP packet to client system - the ME retains enough of an IP stack to receive IP packets.
• Host system power state changes - if the host system is powered on, the ME will be fully powered.

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