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:
Apr. 25, 2000
Robert D. Snyder, Ouistreham, FR;
Dean T. Lindsay, Milpitas, CA (US);
Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P., Houston, TX (US);
Abstract
A method and apparatus for providing a synchronization mechanism to control accesses to a non-cached shared resource by devices connected by a high speed interconnect is herein described. A semaphore is used to control access to a shared resource which is implemented by a pair of semaphore registers. A previous semaphore register is used to store the previous owner of the semaphore and a current semaphore register is used to either store the current owner of the semaphore or indicate that the semaphore is available. The current semaphore register is updated when the semaphore is available and is being taken or when the semaphore is being freed. The previous semaphore register is updated when the semaphore is freed.