Digital Equipment Corporation

David S Sawyer

Kadangode K Ramakrishnan

Peter C Hayden

Douglas M Washabaugh

David Benson

Paul W Ciarfella

Phillip J Weeks

A method and apparatus for adaptive interrupt servicing is disclosed. The number of interrupts occurring within a predetermined time period is counted and stored as a value in an interrupt counter. At the end of each interrupt service, the interrupt counter value is compared to a predefined threshold value. If the value in the interrupt counter equals or exceeds the threshold value, further interrupt servicing is disabled.

Method and apparatus for adaptive interrupt servicing in data processing

Method and apparatus for scheduling operations of a network adapter in such a way as to minimize latency in processing received data packets, while still guaranteeing time for processing necessary background tasks. The method includes executing a polling loop in which repeated tests are made for the presence of receive data to process, but only a limited amount of receive data processing is performed before checking for background processing that needs to be performed. The polling loop ensures that immediate attention is given to processing of receive data, without the inherent latency of interrupt processing, but still gives periodic opportunities for background processing. Background processing is performed for a guaranteed minimum processing time before permitting a return to receive processing. Background processing may be performed without a guaranteed minimum processing time, but only when there is currently no receive processing to do.

Scheduling mechanism for network adapter to minimize latency and

Growing community of inventors

Merrimac, MA, United States of America

David S Sawyer