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:
Apr. 14, 1998
Filed:
Jul. 07, 1995
Denton E Gentry, Palo Alto, CA (US);
Prakash Kashyap, Fremont, CA (US);
Sun Microsystems, Inc., Mountain View, CA (US);
Abstract
A method and an apparatus for hardware and software interaction in data transfers of shared data structures in memory. The method and apparatus decreases the number of mutex lockings required to prevent conflict between different software attempting to access the same data and keeps the index value for each buffer in use in order to prevent conflicts between buffer replacement and packet arrival. In an exemplary implementation of the method and apparatus of the present invention, a receive hardware of a computer system keeps an index value for each buffer in use. This index value is placed in a completion ring protected by a mutex, and placed in a software queue protected by mutex. The mutexes assure that only one thread will possess a given index at a given time. No mutex locking is required for a buffer table containing software address and related information.