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. 13, 2001
Filed:
Jan. 07, 1998
Ravi Kumar Arimilli, Austin, TX (US);
John Michael Kaiser, late of Cedar Park, TX (US);
Derek Edward Williams, Austin, TX (US);
International Business Machines Corporation, Armonk, NY (US);
Abstract
A method and apparatus for preventing the occurrence of deadlocks from the execution of variable delay system bus operations. In general, each snooper excepts a given operation at the same time according to an agreed upon condition. In other words, the snooper in a given cache can accept an operation and begin working on it even while retrying the operation. Furthermore, none of the active snoopers release an operation until all the active snoopers are done with the operation. Execution of a given operation is started by the snoopers at the same time and finished by each of the snoopers at the same time. This prevents the ping-pong deadlock by keeping any one cache from finishing the operation before any of the others. The snoopers initiate operations at the same time based upon a common predefined event and ensure the operations end are finished concurrently when no outstanding retry operations are detected.