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. 18, 2000
Filed:
Oct. 31, 1997
Kit Man Chow, Carlsbad, CA (US);
Chinh Kim Nguyen, San Diego, CA (US);
NCR Corporation, Dayton, OH (US);
Abstract
An enhanced interface between a processor and an Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) segmentation controller. A software driver communicates with the controller to efficiently segment protocol data units (PDUs) into ATM cells for transmission. The software driver creates a series of data structures in memory for managing the PDU, wherein the data structures include a linked list of buffer descriptors that describe the size and location of subportions of the PDU. The ATM controller is capable of accessing and interpreting these data structures. As a result, only a single I/O operation is required for the software driver to initiate direct memory access (DMA) operations by the ATM controller to retrieve the data structures from memory and subsequently transmit the PDU.