Dell USA L P

Dell Products Inc.

Mark A Larson

Benjamen G Tyner

Thomas J Kocis

Lowell B Dennis

Peter A Woytovech

Stephen K Smith

Charles W Morrison

Memory testing at system startup, such as boot POST, of an information handling system is accelerated by adjusting memory testing routines to use instructions that take advantage of optimizations made to information handling system and CPU architectures. For instance, memory test iterations in one Mbyte portions using 128-bit SIMD registers, 64-bit MMX registers, ADD and SUB instructions, the MOVNTDQ instruction, and relying on an initial setting of the gate Aand protected mode result in a substantially accelerated memory test.

System and method for accelerated information handling system memory testing

A method, computer program product and computer system that features intermittently entering the system management mode of a processor to commence and terminate I/O activity between external devices and computer system resources. To that end, a system management interrupt handler is included that monitors bus transactions between a bus controller and an external device that is the subject of I/O activity. Upon sensing the completion of a bus transaction, the system management interrupt handler transmits a system management interrupt to the processor. In response thereto, the processor reads a buffer in the bus controller and provides the requisite resources with the I/O information contained therein.

Background execution of universal serial bus transactions

Provided is a method, a computer program product, and a computer system each of which features queuing data transfers between a data port and a system memory to minimize the latency between queuing a data transfer and effectuating the transfer of the same and to remove the chance of more than one device trying to talk to the OS at the same time through the same port. This facilitates backwards compatibility of non-USB compatible computer resources, such as applications, operating systems (O/S) and the like, with USB compatible peripheral devices.

Universal serial bus PC synchronization algorithm for peripheral devices

A computer system having bus controller operating code stored in a non operating system managed, extended portion of system memory. In one example, the operating code is executed by a bus controller for a computer bus conforming to the Universal Serial Bus (USB) specification. In one example, the bus controller operating code is stored in a portion of system memory that is located above the top system memory address reported to the operating system, thereby hiding the stored code from the operating system. In one example, the bus controller operating code is constructed during the startup of the computer system with a code construction routine. Storing bus controller operating code in a non operating system managed, extended portion of system memory provides a computer system greater flexibility in system memory usage.

Bus controller operating code in system memory

A system and method for handling system management interrupts in a multi-processor computer is disclosed. When the computer enters system management mode, the method uses the registers of each processor to get currently executing opcode to determine what each processor was doing before the interrupt. The method may have to first translate address information to locate the actual physical location of the currently executing opcode. The registers are stored in memory and the contents of the registers can be used to determine if the current processor caused the system management interrupt. If so, then the method now knows which processor caused the interrupt and can handle the interrupt accordingly. If, however, the processor was not the one that caused the interrupt, or if another processor also caused an interrupt, the method then repeats the above steps for the next processor of the multiprocessor system.

System and method for handling interrupts in a multi-processor computer

A telephonic customer support utility for providing diagnostic support of a customer computer including encoding an operational status of a customer's computer to produce audible tones on a speaker corresponding to the encoded status for transmission on a standard telephone line via a standard telephone of the encoded operational status to a remote support computer, the remote support computer having a receiver electrically connected to receive the tones transmitted on the telephone line. The received tones are decoded by a decoder of the remote support computer to determine the operational status of the customer's computer, which status is displayed on a display of the remote support computer for analysis by a customer support technicians.

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Austin, TX, United States of America

Mark A Larson