International Business Machines Corporation

Guy G Sotomayor, Jr

Freeman Leigh Rawson, Iii

Richard Alan Dayan

Richard Bealkowski

Donald D Williams

Scott G Kinnear

Jeffrey Isaac Krantz

Gary A Vaiskauckas

David Joseph Doria

Robert B Liverman

Ching-Yun Chao

Jerry D Dixon

Hardeep Singh

James Michael Magee

Andrew Radcliffe Rawson

Gary Lee Barton

David Barnett Golub

Edward M Tuggle, Jr

Charles Chuldoo Jung

A personality operating system neutral pager manages the backing store of a microkernel data processing system, by interacting with any one of a variety of personality servers that provide a unique personality interface to a source of data for the system. By partitioning the backing storage management functions performed by the personality neutral pager from those personality unique functions performed by the personality servers, backing space can be flexibly managed in the memory of the microkernel system, independent of the eccentricities in the formats and interfaces imposed by diverse data sources such as magnetic disk drives, optical storage devices, distributed data processing networks, and telecommunications networks.

Virtual memory management for a microkernel system with multiple

A system and method is provide for managing input/output (I/O) resources in a computer system. The system includes a hardware resource manager which tracks the use of the I/O resources. In addition, the hardware resource manager can allocate the resources between device drivers and provide a standard implementation to be used by device drivers.

Device driver and input/output hardware research manager

A memory management method for a microkernel architecture and the microkernel itself feature template regions which are defined by the microkernel in the memory, as special objects. In the memory management method, after the microkernel is loaded into the memory of a data processing system, it begins creating task containers in the memory. It does this by forming template regions as special objects in the memory, the template regions having a set of attributes. Then, when the microkernel forms a task in the memory, it does so by mapping the template region into the task. The microkernel defines a virtual address space for the task based upon the template region. Later, when the microkernel conducts virtual memory operations on the template regions, the effect of the virtual memory operations is manifested in the task by means of the mapping relationship. In this manner, a single template region can be mapped into multiple tasks, simultaneously. By directing virtual memory operations to the template region on which they will take effect, the sharing of the virtual memory operations is much easier to accomplish since the changes are made to a template region, not to the mapping of the template region within each task.

Method and apparatus for management of mapped and unmapped regions of

A method and apparatus for managing power states of at least one hardware resource, including registering at least one hardware resource power state corresponding to a software process, determining whether a current hardware resource power state fulfills the registered hardware resource power state corresponding to the software process, and modifying the current hardware resource power state that is determined not to fulfill the registered hardware resource power state prior to executing the software process.

Method and apparatus for computer system power management

A data processing system having an operating system environment, an operating system kernel, and a plurality of device drivers, wherein the plurality of device drivers are programs separate from the kernel. The data processing system includes a kernel that excludes device driver functions. The device drivers in the data processing system are user level tasks or programs. A boot volume stored in a storage device in the data processing system is provided, wherein the boot volume includes: (1) a file anchor, indicating a starting point to find files associated with the boot volume; (2) a plurality of file headers associated with the file anchor, each file header including an identification of files associated with the boot volume; and (3) a plurality of block list elements, each block list element identifying a contiguous block of data in a storage device, wherein data structures comprising a file may be identified and accessed using at least one block list element. A bootstrap task is used to load files into the memory from the data storage device using the boot volume to access the appropriate files, wherein the operating system environment may be initialized.

Boot architecture for microkernel-based systems

A power management architecture in a data processing system comprising physical devices having at least one state, each state has corresponding power value, and where a system state is defined as the set of all current states of the physical devices. Power objects and thermal objects, each corresponding to a physical device, contain information about the power requirements and thermal characteristics of each possible state for that physical device. The power and thermal objects also describe the allowed state transitions from each possible state to another state, and the power requirements and thermal characteristics of all possible state transitions. Also communicated is the current state of each physical device. Event means generate signals indicating the occurrence of an event in the system. A policy module contains rules, implementing the power management, that direct an action, the rules being a function of events and of power object information. A controller, in communication with the physical devices, the thermal and power objects, the event means, and the policy module, changes the state of any one of the physical devices in response to an event. The controller determines whether to change a physical device state based on the policy module rules.

Method and system of power and thermal management for a data processing

A device driver system comprises a core that manages the specific functions of a plurality of I/O devices. The core includes an operating system interface that is generic to different operating systems. An operating system has a device driver interface that is unique to the operating system. A conversion program is layered between the core and the operating system for converting communications between the device driver interface of the operating system and the generic operating system interface of the core. The core includes a channel manager including a request dispatcher, request queues, a command initiator, and a plurality of state machines corresponding to state machine in the I/O devices. A transport layer interfaces between the hardware and the channel manager.

Device driver system having generic operating system interface

A computer system and method for operating a computer system capable of running in mutually incompatible real and protected addressing modes, in which programs written for one mode can be run in the other mode without modification. The BIOS assembles two different common data areas for the two modes, each inclusive of device block pointers, function transfer table pointers, data pointers, and function pointers. The common data area for the real mode is assembled first. To assembly the pointers for the protected mode common data area, the offset values from the real mode area ae copied directly, and then selector values are inserted whose physical addresses correspond to the segments of the corresponding pointers in the real mode area. The selector values are derived from a segment descriptor table.

Computer system having mode independent addressing

In a DASD caching system, in which pages of sectors of data are stored by reading in a desired sector and prefetching a plurality of adjacent sectors for later access, errors in disk storage media cause error signals to be generated. Such errors are handled by storing indications of which sectors have errors and which do not, and accessing such indications in response to later requests for such sectors. Such indications are stored in each page in the cache. Further, a history is maintained of which pages and sectors therein, were placed in the cache in the past.

Method of handling disk sector errors in DASD cache

A computer system and method for operating a computer system capable of running in mutually incompatible real and protected addressing modes, in which programs written for one mode can be run in the other mode without modification. The operating system using BIOS assembles two different common data areas for the two modes, each inclusive of device block pointers, function transfer table pointers, data pointers, and function pointers. The common data area for the real mode is assembled first. To assemble the pointers for the protected mode common data area, the offset values from the real mode area are copied directly, and then selector values are inserted whose physical addresses correspond to the segments of the corresponding pointers in the real mode area. The selector values are derived from a segment descriptor table.

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West Palm Beach, FL, United States of America

Guy G Sotomayor, Jr