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:
Oct. 25, 1994
Filed:
Mar. 11, 1993
Joseph P Moran, Santa Clara, CA (US);
Russel P Sandberg, San Francisco, CA (US);
Donald C Coleman, Piedmont, CA (US);
Legato Systems, Inc., Pala Alto, CA (US);
Abstract
An acceleration device for enhancing the speed of synchronous writes in a computer system includes a novel control means, in one embodiment a device driver, and stable storage having an access time on the same order of magnitude as the access time of the main memory in the computer system. In one embodiment, the novel device driver is interposed in the operating system of the computer between the proprietary kernel and one or more peripheral storage unit device drivers. The novel device driver intercepts I/O commands, for example, synchronous write commands, from the operating system that are intended for one of the peripheral storage unit device drivers and subsequently copies the data specified in the write command from main memory of the computer to the stable storage of the acceleration device. The stable storage is operated as a cache and upon one of a set of predetermined conditions being satisfied, selected data stored in the stable storage are transferred, i.e., flushed to the appropriate peripheral storage device using the device driver for that storage device. Further, the stable storage in the acceleration device preserves data written to the device when either the computer system or a peripheral storage device coupled to the acceleration device goes into an error condition.