diff --git a/Documentation/acpi/scan_handlers.txt b/Documentation/acpi/scan_handlers.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3246ccf
--- /dev/null
+++ b/Documentation/acpi/scan_handlers.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,77 @@
+ACPI Scan Handlers
+
+Copyright (C) 2012, Intel Corporation
+Author: Rafael J. Wysocki <rafael.j.wysocki@intel.com>
+
+During system initialization and ACPI-based device hot-add, the ACPI namespace
+is scanned in search of device objects that generally represent various pieces
+of hardware.  This causes a struct acpi_device object to be created and
+registered with the driver core for every device object in the ACPI namespace
+and the hierarchy of those struct acpi_device objects reflects the namespace
+layout (i.e. parent device objects in the namespace are represented by parent
+struct acpi_device objects and analogously for their children).  Those struct
+acpi_device objects are referred to as "device nodes" in what follows, but they
+should not be confused with struct device_node objects used by the Device Trees
+parsing code (although their role is analogous to the role of those objects).
+
+During ACPI-based device hot-remove device nodes representing pieces of hardware
+being removed are unregistered and deleted.
+
+The core ACPI namespace scanning code in drivers/acpi/scan.c carries out basic
+initialization of device nodes, such as retrieving common configuration
+information from the device objects represented by them and populating them with
+appropriate data, but some of them require additional handling after they have
+been registered.  For example, if the given device node represents a PCI host
+bridge, its registration should cause the PCI bus under that bridge to be
+enumerated and PCI devices on that bus to be registered with the driver core.
+Similarly, if the device node represents a PCI interrupt link, it is necessary
+to configure that link so that the kernel can use it.
+
+Those additional configuration tasks usually depend on the type of the hardware
+component represented by the given device node which can be determined on the
+basis of the device node's hardware ID (HID).  They are performed by objects
+called ACPI scan handlers represented by the following structure:
+
+struct acpi_scan_handler {
+	const struct acpi_device_id *ids;
+	struct list_head list_node;
+	int (*attach)(struct acpi_device *dev, const struct acpi_device_id *id);
+	void (*detach)(struct acpi_device *dev);
+};
+
+where ids is the list of IDs of device nodes the given handler is supposed to
+take care of, list_node is the hook to the global list of ACPI scan handlers
+maintained by the ACPI core and the .attach() and .detach() callbacks are
+executed, respectively, after registration of new device nodes and before
+unregistration of device nodes the handler attached to previously.
+
+The namespace scanning function, acpi_bus_scan(), first registers all of the
+device nodes in the given namespace scope with the driver core.  Then, it tries
+to match a scan handler against each of them using the ids arrays of the
+available scan handlers.  If a matching scan handler is found, its .attach()
+callback is executed for the given device node.  If that callback returns 1,
+that means that the handler has claimed the device node and is now responsible
+for carrying out any additional configuration tasks related to it.  It also will
+be responsible for preparing the device node for unregistration in that case.
+The device node's handler field is then populated with the address of the scan
+handler that has claimed it.
+
+If the .attach() callback returns 0, it means that the device node is not
+interesting to the given scan handler and may be matched against the next scan
+handler in the list.  If it returns a (negative) error code, that means that
+the namespace scan should be terminated due to a serious error.  The error code
+returned should then reflect the type of the error.
+
+The namespace trimming function, acpi_bus_trim(), first executes .detach()
+callbacks from the scan handlers of all device nodes in the given namespace
+scope (if they have scan handlers).  Next, it unregisters all of the device
+nodes in that scope.
+
+ACPI scan handlers can be added to the list maintained by the ACPI core with the
+help of the acpi_scan_add_handler() function taking a pointer to the new scan
+handler as an argument.  The order in which scan handlers are added to the list
+is the order in which they are matched against device nodes during namespace
+scans.
+
+All scan handles must be added to the list before acpi_bus_scan() is run for the
+first time and they cannot be removed from it.
diff --git a/drivers/acpi/scan.c b/drivers/acpi/scan.c
index fe9f2c9..1453cd0 100644
--- a/drivers/acpi/scan.c
+++ b/drivers/acpi/scan.c
@@ -53,6 +53,7 @@
 static LIST_HEAD(acpi_device_list);
 static LIST_HEAD(acpi_bus_id_list);
 static DEFINE_MUTEX(acpi_scan_lock);
+static LIST_HEAD(acpi_scan_handlers_list);
 DEFINE_MUTEX(acpi_device_lock);
 LIST_HEAD(acpi_wakeup_device_list);
 
@@ -62,6 +63,15 @@
 	struct list_head node;
 };
 
+int acpi_scan_add_handler(struct acpi_scan_handler *handler)
+{
+	if (!handler || !handler->attach)
+		return -EINVAL;
+
+	list_add_tail(&handler->list_node, &acpi_scan_handlers_list);
+	return 0;
+}
+
 /*
  * Creates hid/cid(s) string needed for modalias and uevent
  * e.g. on a device with hid:IBM0001 and cid:ACPI0001 you get:
@@ -1570,20 +1580,42 @@
 	return AE_OK;
 }
 
+static int acpi_scan_attach_handler(struct acpi_device *device)
+{
+	struct acpi_scan_handler *handler;
+	int ret = 0;
+
+	list_for_each_entry(handler, &acpi_scan_handlers_list, list_node) {
+		const struct acpi_device_id *id;
+
+		id = __acpi_match_device(device, handler->ids);
+		if (!id)
+			continue;
+
+		ret = handler->attach(device, id);
+		if (ret > 0) {
+			device->handler = handler;
+			break;
+		} else if (ret < 0) {
+			break;
+		}
+	}
+	return ret;
+}
+
 static acpi_status acpi_bus_device_attach(acpi_handle handle, u32 lvl_not_used,
 					  void *not_used, void **ret_not_used)
 {
 	const struct acpi_device_id *id;
-	acpi_status status = AE_OK;
 	struct acpi_device *device;
 	unsigned long long sta_not_used;
-	int type_not_used;
+	int ret;
 
 	/*
 	 * Ignore errors ignored by acpi_bus_check_add() to avoid terminating
 	 * namespace walks prematurely.
 	 */
-	if (acpi_bus_type_and_status(handle, &type_not_used, &sta_not_used))
+	if (acpi_bus_type_and_status(handle, &ret, &sta_not_used))
 		return AE_OK;
 
 	if (acpi_bus_get_device(handle, &device))
@@ -1593,10 +1625,15 @@
 	if (id) {
 		/* This is a known good platform device. */
 		acpi_create_platform_device(device, id->driver_data);
-	} else if (device_attach(&device->dev) < 0) {
-		status = AE_CTRL_DEPTH;
+		return AE_OK;
 	}
-	return status;
+
+	ret = acpi_scan_attach_handler(device);
+	if (ret)
+		return ret > 0 ? AE_OK : AE_CTRL_DEPTH;
+
+	ret = device_attach(&device->dev);
+	return ret >= 0 ? AE_OK : AE_CTRL_DEPTH;
 }
 
 /**
@@ -1639,8 +1676,17 @@
 	struct acpi_device *device = NULL;
 
 	if (!acpi_bus_get_device(handle, &device)) {
+		struct acpi_scan_handler *dev_handler = device->handler;
+
 		device->removal_type = ACPI_BUS_REMOVAL_EJECT;
-		device_release_driver(&device->dev);
+		if (dev_handler) {
+			if (dev_handler->detach)
+				dev_handler->detach(device);
+
+			device->handler = NULL;
+		} else {
+			device_release_driver(&device->dev);
+		}
 	}
 	return AE_OK;
 }
diff --git a/include/acpi/acpi_bus.h b/include/acpi/acpi_bus.h
index ad0a86a..41850cb 100644
--- a/include/acpi/acpi_bus.h
+++ b/include/acpi/acpi_bus.h
@@ -84,6 +84,18 @@
 struct acpi_device;
 
 /*
+ * ACPI Scan Handler
+ * -----------------
+ */
+
+struct acpi_scan_handler {
+	const struct acpi_device_id *ids;
+	struct list_head list_node;
+	int (*attach)(struct acpi_device *dev, const struct acpi_device_id *id);
+	void (*detach)(struct acpi_device *dev);
+};
+
+/*
  * ACPI Driver
  * -----------
  */
@@ -269,6 +281,7 @@
 	struct acpi_device_wakeup wakeup;
 	struct acpi_device_perf performance;
 	struct acpi_device_dir dir;
+	struct acpi_scan_handler *handler;
 	struct acpi_driver *driver;
 	void *driver_data;
 	struct device dev;
@@ -382,6 +395,7 @@
 static inline int acpi_bus_generate_proc_event(struct acpi_device *device, u8 type, int data)
 	{ return 0; }
 #endif
+int acpi_scan_add_handler(struct acpi_scan_handler *handler);
 int acpi_bus_register_driver(struct acpi_driver *driver);
 void acpi_bus_unregister_driver(struct acpi_driver *driver);
 int acpi_bus_scan(acpi_handle handle);