Nvidia Corporation

Iready Corporation

Thomas C Poff

John Shigeto Minami

Ryo Koyama

Michael Ward Johnson

Masaru Shinohara

Daniel F Burkes

An apparatus and method are provided including a hardware accelerator capable of being interfaced with a processor for accelerating the execution of an application written utilizing an object-oriented programming language. Such object-oriented programming language may include Java and/or C++.

Hardware accelerator for an object-oriented programming language

A multiple network protocol encoder/decoder comprising a network protocol layer, data handler, O.S. State machine, and memory manager state machines implemented at a hardware gate level. Network packets are received from a physical transport level mechanism by the network protocol layer state machine which decodes network protocols such as TCP, IP, User Datagram Protocol (UDP), PPP, and Raw Socket concurrently as each byte is received. Each protocol handler parses and strips header information immediately from the packet, requiring no intermediate memory. The resulting data are passed to the data handler which consists of data state machines that decode data formats such as email, graphics, Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP), Java, and Hypertext Markup Language (HTML). Each data state machine reacts accordingly to the pertinent data, and any data that are required by more than one data state machine is provided to each state machine concurrently, and any data required more than once by a specific data state machine, are placed in a specific memory location with a pointer designating such data (thereby ensuring minimal memory usage). Resulting display data are immediately passed to a display controller. Any outgoing network packets are created by the data state machines and passed through the network protocol state machine which adds header information and forwards the resulting network packet via a transport level mechanism.

Multiple network protocol encoder/decoder and data processor

A method and apparatus for accelerating an object-oriented programming language are provided at a hardware gate level. In a Java-compliant embodiment, a Java Application framework is implemented in hardware. The Java.AWT, Java.NET. and Java.IO application frameworks are supported in the preferred embodiment of the invention. Instances and methods of supported application framework classes that are executed by a Java program are offloaded to a hardware object management system. A software stub is provided as an interface between the hardware object management system and the central processing unit.

A method and apparatus for accelerating an object-oriented programming language are provided at a hardware gate level. In a Java-compliant embodiment, a Java Application framework is implemented in hardware. The Java.AWT, Java.NET, and Java.IO application frameworks are supported in the preferred embodiment of the invention. Application framework classes are stored as libraries in a shared memory. Instances and methods of supported application framework classes that are executed by a Java program are offloaded to a hardware object management system. A software stub is provided as an interface between the hardware object management system and the central processing unit. Central processing unit processing of non-supported application framework instructions is continued during hardware accelerator execution of hardware object management system requests.

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Los Altos, CA, United States of America

Thomas C Poff