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:
Jan. 11, 2005

Filed:

Apr. 12, 2001
Applicants:

Luke Matthew Browning, Austin, TX (US);

Thomas Stanley Mathews, Austin, TX (US);

Paul Edward Mckenney, Beaverton, OR (US);

James Bernard Moody, Austin, TX (US);

Inventors:

Luke Matthew Browning, Austin, TX (US);

Thomas Stanley Mathews, Austin, TX (US);

Paul Edward McKenney, Beaverton, OR (US);

James Bernard Moody, Austin, TX (US);

Attorneys:
Primary Examiner:
Assistant Examiner:
Int. Cl.
CPC ...
G06F 1200 ;
U.S. Cl.
CPC ...
Abstract

An apparatus, method and computer program product for minimizing the negative effects that occur when simple locks are highly contended among processors which may or may not have identical latencies to the memory that represents a given lock, are provided. The apparatus, method and computer program product minimize these effects by converting simple locks such that they act as standard simple locks when there is no contention and act as krlocks when there is contention for a lock. In this way, the number of processors spinning on a lock is limited to a single processor, thereby reducing the number of processors that are in a wait state and not performing any useful work.


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