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:
Mar. 06, 2001
Filed:
Jan. 06, 1998
Cary Coutant, Saratoga, CA (US);
William B. Buzbee, Half Moon Bay, CA (US);
Anthony F. Istvan, San Jose, CA (US);
Hewlett-Packard Company, Palo Alto, CA (US);
Abstract
The inventive mechanism allows an application to switch modes during its operation, between a compatibility or legacy mode for a previous architecture, and a native mode for a current architecture. The mechanism includes an official function descriptor which describes information for accessing a function which resides in one module. The OFD has a legacy portion is useable by a legacy module and a native portion is useable by a native module. The mechanism also includes a linkage table that resides in a second module which references the function in the first module. The portion of the OFD which corresponds to the mode of the linkage table module is copied into the linkage table. Each portion contains one entry that corresponds to an address location of the function, and another entry that is a value for a register which refers to the data segment corresponding to the load module containing the function. The information in the OFD depends on whether the function is a legacy function or a native function.