3com Corporation

Jahan Lotfi

Claude G Hayek

Edmund C Chen

A method and system for efficiently servicing a peripheral component event. In one embodiment of the present invention, a peripheral component such as, for example, a network interface card generates a first interrupt upon the occurrence of a first peripheral component event. In the present embodiment, a peripheral component driver such as, for example, a network interface card driver then services the first peripheral component event. In this embodiment of the present invention, the peripheral component then services any existing coalesced peripheral component event (or events) which has not yet generated a respective interrupt. In so doing, the present embodiment eliminates the need for the existing coalesced peripheral component event to generate an additional interrupt at some later time. As a result, the present embodiment reduces the frequency with which interrupts are generated, and minimizes the CPU overhead associated with the servicing of interrupts.

Interrupt events chaining

A method and system for efficiently transferring data between a host computer and a peripheral component which is removably coupled to the host computer. In one embodiment of the present invention, a peripheral component driver such as, for example, a network interface card driver receives a request from a peripheral component, such as, for example, a network interface card, to transfer data from the peripheral component to memory of the host computer. The data to be transferred requires a first block of memory in the host computer wherein the first block of the memory has a first size. The present embodiment then allocates a second block of memory in the host computer to receive the data from the peripheral component. In the present invention, the second block of memory has a second size which is greater than the first size. Additionally, the second block of memory comprises an integer unit of the memory. In so doing, the present invention minimizes CPU overhead associated with data transfers between a peripheral component and the memory of a host computer. The present invention also reduces latency associated with data transfers between a peripheral component and the memory of a host computer.

System for allocating an integer unit of memory greater than a requested

A method and system for efficiently transferring data between a host computer and a peripheral component which is removably coupled to the host computer. In one embodiment of the present invention, a peripheral component such as, for example, a network interface card receives information from a peripheral component driver, such as, for example, a network interface card driver. In this embodiment, the information triggers the peripheral component to transmit a read request to the host computer such that the peripheral component can access data present at the host computer. Next, the peripheral component determines from the information received at the peripheral component, which type of read request to transmit to the host computer. In this embodiment, the type of read request is selected such that only a desired portion of the data will be prefetched and stored in memory of the host computer. The peripheral component then transmits the read request to the host computer such that the peripheral component has access to the portion of the data. In this invention, the portion of the data is selected such that when stored in the memory of the host computer, the portion of the data will end on a boundary of the memory. Then, the peripheral component reads the portion of the data which is stored in the memory of the host computer. In so doing, the present invention minimizes CPU overhead associated with prefetching data in response to a read request from a peripheral component.

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Fremont, CA, United States of America

Jahan Lotfi