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. 09, 2002
Filed:
Feb. 18, 1997
Nawaf K. Bitar, San Jose, CA (US);
Robert M. English, Menlo Park, CA (US);
Rajagopal Ananthanarayanan, Sunnyvale, CA (US);
Silicon Graphics, Inc., Mountain View, CA (US);
Abstract
A system and method for inexpensively detecting preempted execution entities such as threads without kernel involvement. In a computer system having a memory and one or more processors, a shared memory arena is formed in user space within the memory. A preempt bit vector is then formed within the shared memory arena such that the preempt bit vector is accessible to any of a plurality of execution entities running in user mode. The preempt bit vector includes a plurality of rbits, wherein each rbit is associated with one of the plurality of execution entities and wherein an rbit is marked whenever its associated execution entity is preempted. Detection of preempted threads then becomes a matter of reading, via program code executing in user mode on one of the plurality of processors, bits in the preempt bit vector to detect preempted execution entities.