Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC

Keith Loren Mange

Sarath Madakasira

Mehmet Iyigun

John Andrew Starks

Jason Lin

Daniel Frederick Cuomo, Jr

Travis Luke

Daniel Max Firestone

Harish Kumar Chandrappa

Mahmoud S Elhaddad

Madhan Sivakumar

Ranjit Puri

Deepak Narula

Vikas Bhardwaj

Xuan Zou

Manish Tiwari

Keerthi Shankar

Timekeeping on a computing device is deterministically performed by implementing two successive calls to a time function that returns current time based on a continuously running counter that is maintained in one or more cores of the device's CPU. The same fixed time computation parameters are used in each call, with the single variable being a value that is read from the counter. For the initial call to the time function, the processor optimizes the instruction execution by predicting the function's execution path based on observed patterns. As the instructions and data are already cached, and the processor has the results of the prior execution path prediction, the subsequent call executes quickly and predictably relative to the initial call while the processor remains in a working (i.e., non-sleep) state. The series of calls provides a deterministic time computation with improved accuracy by mitigating the unpredictability of processor sleep state delays.

Accurate timestamp or derived counter value generation on a complex CPU

Exposing a leap second to a plurality of applications includes identifying that a positive leap second should be added to the end of a chosen date. Based on the occurrence of the positive leap second, a first conversion component is exposed to a first application. The first conversion component presents, over a period of two seconds of actual time, a last second of the chosen date as if it is one second of system time. Based on the occurrence of the positive leap second, and based on a second application opting in to leap seconds, a second conversion component is exposed to the second application. The second conversion component presents an extra 61st second of system time at the end of a last minute of the chosen date.

Application compatible leap second support

Exposing a leap second to a plurality of applications includes identifying a system setting enabling leap second support and that a positive leap second should be added to the end of a chosen date. Based on the system setting enabling leap second support and based on the occurrence of the positive leap second, a first conversion component is exposed to a first application. The first conversion component presents, over a period of two seconds of actual time, a last second of the chosen date as if it is one second of system time. Based on the system setting enabling leap second support, based on the occurrence of the positive leap second, and based on a second application opting in to leap seconds, a second conversion component is exposed to the second application. The second conversion component presents an extra 61st second of system time at the end of a last minute of the chosen date.

An overlay network refers to a network that is implemented as various different virtual resources on a physical network referred to as an underlay network. Diagnostics are performed on the overlay network by injecting diagnostic packets from a source endpoint targeting a target endpoint. These endpoints can be in the overlay network, on-premises with the other endpoint but in a different overlay network, or off-premises form the other endpoint. The diagnostic packets include a data packet encapsulated with a diagnostic encapsulation header that can be removed by a network element in the underlay network to allow processing of the data packet, and then added back on. The network element maintains trace information that is a record of receipt of the diagnostic packet and operations performed on the diagnostic packet. A tracing service collects and analyzes this trace information from the various network elements.

Active flow diagnostics for cloud-hosted networks

A network stack sends very large packets with large segment offload (LSO) by performing multi-pass LSO. A first-stage LSO filter is inserted between the network stack and the physical NIC. The first-stage filter splits very large LSO packets into LSO packets that are small enough for the NIC. The NIC then performs a second pass of LSO by splitting these sub-packets into standard MTU-sized networking packets for transmission on the network.

Multi-stage large send offload

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Beaux Arts, WA, United States of America

Keith Loren Mange