The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Aug. 02, 1994
Filed:
Dec. 24, 1991
Kenneth W Christopher, Jr, Lighthouse Point, FL (US);
Virginia M Roarabaugh, Boca Raton, FL (US);
Theodore C Waldron, III, Sunrise, FL (US);
International Business Machines Corporation, Armonk, NY (US);
Abstract
A method and system for enhancing operating system efficiency in a data processing system by ensuring alignment of stack memory at a multi-byte boundary such that multi-byte data fetch operations may be utilized to efficiently retrieve data from the stack memory. At each invocation of an operating system procedure from an application within a data processing system, a stack memory pointer is examined to determine if stack memory contents including passed parameters and local variables to be allocated onto the stack memory will be aligned at a multi-byte boundary. In response to a prospective nonalignment of local variables, the operating system procedure is recursively invoked with an additional 'dummy' parameter, such that stack memory contents will be aligned at a multi-byte boundary. Thereafter, the operating system will automatically align data within the stack memory at a multi-byte boundary so that the data may be efficiently stored and retrieved utilizing multi-byte data operations.