Intel Corporation

Jianfeng Mei

Cong Li

Lechong Chen

Jun J Wang

Bin Xing

Feng Jin

Caidong Song

Yi Chen

Yang Zhang

Ke Yu

Yuanhao Sun

Yaunhao Sun

A method and system to manage an extension mechanism for firmware is described. A firmware binary file is stored in an extension area of a storage device of a computer system. The Basic Input/Output System (BIOS) of the computer system is modified to access the stored firmware binary file stored in the extension area. In one embodiment, the computer system is Extensible Firmware Interface (EFI) compliant.

Manageability extension mechanism for system firmware

A method and apparatus for incremental package deployment are described. In one embodiment, the method includes the redirection of disk input/output (I/O) requests to preserve contents of disk memory. Following redirection of the disk I/O request, a software distribution package is created according to disk I/O write requests redirected to unused blocks of disk memory. In one embodiment, the software distribution package is generated using a firmware agent, which uploads the software distribution package to a server, which provisions the software distribution packet to other computers within a uniform environment to ensure that each system within the uniform environment has an identical system and memory image. Other embodiments are described and claimed.

Apparatus and method for incremental package deployment

A method of transmitting data through network stack choosing one of a synchronous and an asynchronous mode depending on requests of applications. The method may involve changing frequencies of a timer, for example, adjusting the frequency in the asynchronous Application Programming Interface (API) according to a load of network traffic and even stopping the timer for the synchronous API. In the asynchronous API, as heavier network traffic load is expected, the timer may increase its frequency. Accordingly, the timer decreases its frequency detecting the lighter network traffic and the remaining Central Processing Unit (CPU) cycles may be used to execute the foreground task, while the network stack still may respond to Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP) and Address Resolution Protocol (ARP) requests. As the application tries to receive packets, for example, downloading a large volume of data, such as the kernel of an Operating System (OS), the network stack may even shut down the timer temporarily and switch to a synchronous mode to improve overall system performance. Here, the network stack may use a busy waiting signal to notify its status.

Hybrid mode network stack under EFI/Tiano based BIOS in modular computing environment

Methods and apparatuses provide for incremental provisioning of software for a processing system. For instance, a processing system may include a machine accessible medium and a processor in communication with the machine accessible medium. In addition, instructions encoded in the machine accessible medium may cause the processing system to automatically determine whether a storage device in the processing system includes modified blocks, based at least in part on a write log file that identifies blocks that were modified during a user session on the processing system. In response to identifying at least one modified block in the storage device, the processing system may automatically replace data in the modified block with backup data from a different storage device. Other embodiments are described and claimed.

Incremental provisioning of software

A method and apparatus for an event handling mechanism are described. Under an embodiment of the invention, a method comprises setting a timer for a plurality of time intervals; calling a polling function at the end of each of the plurality of time intervals, the polling function being performed by a first processor; and if the polling function results in a positive result, processing the results of the polling function with a second processor.

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Shanghai, China

Jianfeng Mei