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:
Jun. 01, 2004
Filed:
Jan. 11, 2001
Tam D. Bui, Austin, TX (US);
George John Dawkins, Austin, TX (US);
Van Hoa Lee, Cedar Park, TX (US);
Kiet Anh Tran, Cedar Park, TX (US);
International Business Machines Corporation, Armonk, NY (US);
Abstract
A method and apparatus preserve the data structures established in the earliest stage of initial power load, rather than each system firmware component rediscovering the hardware components of the system. Thus, the data structure is available at later stages for other firmware components. In a logical partitioning machine, the open firmware partition manager can utilize the data structure to support the partition's open firmware device tree construction. The partition manager customizes the copies of these data structures residing in the partition's memory. For hardware devices in the system but not belonging to the partition, the device information is cleared and marked invalid. After the data structures are established and updated by the earliest firmware I/O configuration component, the addresses of these structures are provided to the open firmware component. The open firmware copies these data structures to its internally safe working area and uses the copies for its normal operation. When runtime abstraction service firmware component is instantiated, the addresses of the structures of open firmware's copies are provided by the open firmware component to runtime abstraction service. Again, runtime abstraction service makes copies of these structures within its internally safe working space for its operation.