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:
Feb. 25, 1997
Filed:
Aug. 11, 1995
Ryan L Badger, Wake Forest, NC (US);
Kenneth J Barker, Cary, NC (US);
Paul H Nichols, Raleigh, NC (US);
Russell E Schroter, Raleigh, NC (US);
John K Stacy, Cary, NC (US);
Mark C Wartski, Raleigh, NC (US);
International Business Machines Corporation, Armonk, NY (US);
Abstract
An ATM communications network includes a system processor having a device driver and a memory coupled to an adapter at an interface. Frames stored in the memory are transmitted to the network using a transmit ready queue residing in the adapter and defined by transmit control registers. The frames are linked together by descriptors and pointers to received ready lists maintained by the device driver. A transmit frame complete list is established in the system memory using the transmit control registers. An interrupt is generated by the adapter indicating when frame transmission is complete. Simultaneously, cells are received from the network and stored in system memory according to a free buffer list established by the device driver. A pointer is maintained by the device driver to the last entry of the receive free buffer list. The adapter maintains a pointer to the next buffer to be used from the receive free buffer list. A receive ready list is established by the device driver in system memory with the location indicated to the adapter via the receive control registers in the adapter. The receive data cells are reassembled into frames in buffers from the free buffer list. At completion of a received frame, the frame is added to an appropriate receive ready list. An interrupt is generated to the processor by the adapter when one or more completed frames reside on the receive ready list for transmission to the network.