Compaq Computer Corporation, Inc.

Lee B Hinkle

Gary W Thome

Michael R Durham

David R Wooten

Paul A Santeler

John A Landry

Christopher E Simonich

Robin T Tran

A computer system which includes an electromagnetic hoodlock, and does not have any simple way to bypass the hood-lock The hoodlock consists of a spring-loaded solenoid, and is controlled by the system microprocessor. The system chassis may only be opened by a user with sufficient rights, after entering a password, or after an administrative command is sent over the computer network.

Electronic hood lock

A memory controller dynamically predicts whether a next memory cycle which is not yet available will result in a page miss or page hit condition. RAS lines are selectively precharged if the next memory cycle is predicted to be a page miss. The memory controller keeps track of various combinations of types of cycles when a type of memory cycle is followed by a type of non-memory pending cycle. For each such combination, the memory controller determines the percentage of combinations which result in a page hit on the next memory cycle. Using this history, the memory controller selectively precharges the RAS lines when a certain combination of types of cycles indicates a percentage of hits is below a predicted threshold. If a number of page hits exceeds the predicted threshold, precharging is not performed.

Memory controller that dynamically predicts page misses

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Tomball, TX, United States of America

Lee B Hinkle