Apple Inc.

Zeh-Chen Liu

Cahya Adiansyah Masputra

Sandeep Nair

Wei Shen

Karan Sanghi

Olivier Mardinian

Mingzhe Zhang

Ryan A Hoagland

Methods and apparatus for device driver operation in non-kernel space. In one embodiment, an apparatus configured to configured to interface to a component device driver within non-kernel space is disclosed. The exemplary embodiment restricts device drivers to fewer privileges than kernel processes, while still providing acceptable real-time performance. In another embodiment, mechanisms for non-kernel space device driver operation are described. In one exemplary embodiment, a shared memory interface between kernel space and device drivers enables e.g., a zero-copy device driver architecture.

Methods and apparatus for device driver operation in non-kernel space

Methods and apparatus for efficient data transfer within a user space network stack. Unlike prior art monolithic networking stacks, the exemplary networking stack architecture described hereinafter includes various components that span multiple domains (both in-kernel, and non-kernel). For example, unlike traditional 'socket' based communication, disclosed embodiments can transfer data directly between the kernel and user space domains. Direct transfer reduces the per-byte and per-packet costs relative to socket based communication. A user space networking stack is disclosed that enables extensible, cross-platform-capable, user space control of the networking protocol stack functionality. The user space networking stack facilitates tighter integration between the protocol layers (including TLS) and the application or daemon. Exemplary systems can support multiple networking protocol stack instances (including an in-kernel traditional network stack).

Methods and apparatus for single entity buffer pool management

Methods and apparatus for dynamic packet pool configuration in networking stack architectures. Unlike prior art monolithic memory allocations, embodiments of the present disclosure enable packet pools associated with non-kernel space applications to dynamically allocate additional memory allocations to a given non-kernel space application, or conversely, de-allocate memory allocations to a given non-kernel space application. Variants also disclose the splitting up of a memory allocation into device accessible portions and kernel accessible portions. Other variants disclose sizing certain segment allocations so as to be a multiple of a physical address page size. Such a variant enables a single input/output (I/O) bus address lookup for the given segment so as to minimize look up costs associated with an I/O lookup for the given segment.

Methods and apparatus for dynamic packet pool configuration in networking stack infrastructures

The disclosed embodiments provide a system that performs power management on a computer system. The system includes an embedded controller and an operating system. During the execution of a sleep sequence by the operating system, the embedded controller latches events associated with use of the computer system. After the sleep sequence has completed, the embedded controller compares the latched events with a set of enabled wake events for the computer system and a current state of the computer system. If the latched events indicate that the current state corresponds to one of the enabled wake events, the embedded controller triggers a wake sequence on the computer system.

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Cupertino, CA, United States of America

Zeh-Chen Liu