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.

Date of Patent:
Sep. 24, 2002

Filed:

Jan. 15, 1999
Applicant:
Inventors:

Thomas V Spencer, Ft Collins, CO (US);

Robert J Horning, Ft Collins, CO (US);

Assignee:

Hewlett-Packard Company, Palo Alto, CA (US);

Attorney:
Primary Examiner:
Assistant Examiner:
Int. Cl.
CPC ...
G06F 1/200 ;
U.S. Cl.
CPC ...
G06F 1/200 ;
Abstract

The present invention is generally directed to a system and method for providing improved memory management in an asynchronous I/O cache memory. The method includes the steps of identifying a request for data from the system memory by a requesting device that is in communication with the system memory via an I/O bus. Then the method controls the communication of data from the system memory into the cache memory. The method further includes the step of communicating the data from the cache memory to the requesting device, and immediately after communicating the data to the requesting device, the method discards the data from the cache memory. In accordance with the preferred embodiment, the method flushes data from the I/O cache line at a time. Therefore, when a given cache line of data is flushed from the cache after the last data byte of the cache line is communicated out to the requesting device.


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