Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC

Thomas Fenwick

Michael Ginsberg

William H Mitchell

Sharad Mathur

Jason William Fuller

Anthony Kitowicz

Darryl Ellis Rubin

Described herein is a method of controlling memory usage in a computer system having limited physical memory, wherein one or more application programs execute in conjunction with an operating system. At a first memory usage threshold, the operating system requests at least one of the application programs to limit its use of memory. At a second memory usage threshold that is more critical than the first memory usage threshold, the operating system requests at least one of the application programs to close itself. At a third memory usage threshold that is more critical than the first and second memory usage thresholds, the operating system terminates at least one of the application programs without allowing its further execution.

Controlling memory usage in systems having limited physical memory

The invention includes a method of making a call from one process to another. The method includes executing a jump instruction from a first process, while specifying an invalid destination address such as an odd virtual memory address. The invalid address causes a memory fault, which in turn results in the invocation of a memory fault handler. The memory fault handler is configured to recognize certain specified invalid addresses, and to call different system functions depending on the particular values of the addresses. The thread of the calling process is used to execute both the fault handler and the called system functions.

Common-thread inter-process function calls invoked by jumps to invalid addresses

An improved method for the sharing of data among a file server, a file system, and a network driver executing on a computer is provided. The file system allocates cache buffers to be used in reading from or writing to a file. When reading a file, the file system starts loading the cache buffers with the file data. When a buffer is loaded, the file system signals the file server that a buffer at a certain address is loaded. The file server provides the network driver with the buffer address of the data that is ready to be transported onto a computer network. The transport system then reads the data from the cache buffers and sends the data onto the computer network. When writing a file, the file system allocates cache buffers to receive the file. The file system notifies the file server of the cache buffer addresses. The file server then notifies the network driver of the cache buffer addresses. When the network driver receives the data it loads the data directly into the cache buffers. The file system can then write the data from the cache buffers to the disk.

Method of sharing memory between an operating system and an application

A method for calling and returning from a computer subroutine is provided. The method allows a subroutine executing on a stack-oriented computer with segmented addressing, such as the Intel 80386, to be invoked by both an inter-segment call and an intra-segment call instruction. The method allows multiple subroutines in one code segment to share an inter-segment return instruction. The method further provides for the locating of that instruction so that the pushing of its offset onto the stack can be accomplished efficiently.

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Redmond, WA, United States of America

Thomas Fenwick