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:
Jul. 24, 2001
Filed:
May. 29, 1998
Edmund Chen, Sunnyvale, CA (US);
Claude Hayek, Mountain View, CA (US);
Jahan Lotfi, Fremont, CA (US);
3Com Corporation, Santa Clara, CA (US);
Abstract
A method and system for efficiently servicing a peripheral component event. In one embodiment of the present invention, a peripheral component such as, for example, a network interface card generates a first interrupt upon the occurrence of a first peripheral component event. In the present embodiment, a peripheral component driver such as, for example, a network interface card driver then services the first peripheral component event. In this embodiment of the present invention, the peripheral component then services any existing coalesced peripheral component event (or events) which has not yet generated a respective interrupt. In so doing, the present embodiment eliminates the need for the existing coalesced peripheral component event to generate an additional interrupt at some later time. As a result, the present embodiment reduces the frequency with which interrupts are generated, and minimizes the CPU overhead associated with the servicing of interrupts.