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. 28, 1998
Filed:
Sep. 29, 1995
Bruce Gerard Mealey, Austin, TX (US);
Jeffrey Scott Peek, Austin, TX (US);
Mark Douglass Rogers, Austin, TX (US);
Randal Craig Swanberg, Round Rock, TX (US);
Michael Stephen Williams, Austin, TX (US);
International Business Machines Corporation, Armonk, NY (US);
Abstract
A method and apparatus for enabling AIX device driver (DD) created for a uniprocessor (UP) system to run unchanged on a symmetrical multiprocessor system (SMP). Device drivers are processed by a funnelling mechanism so that UP device drivers always runs on a 'Master' processor in a multi-processor system. New device drivers written for the SMP system are permitted to bypass the funneling mechanism and proceed directly to execution on any available processor in the SMP system. Device registration services are provided which examine DD flags looking for a new unique flag indicating that the device driver is SMP enabled. If the flag is not present, then emulating a uniprocessor environment for execution of that device driver.