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:
May. 03, 2005
Filed:
Sep. 17, 1999
James B. Keller, Palo Alto, CA (US);
Derrick R. Meyer, Austin, TX (US);
James B. Keller, Palo Alto, CA (US);
Derrick R. Meyer, Austin, TX (US);
Advanced Micro Devices, Inc., Sunnyvale, CA (US);
Abstract
A computer system employs virtual channels and allocates different resources to the virtual channels. Packets which do not have logical/protocol-related conflicts are grouped into a virtual channel. Accordingly, logical conflicts occur between packets in separate virtual channels. The packets within a virtual channel may share resources (and hence experience resource conflicts), but the packets within different virtual channels may not share resources. Since packets which may experience resource conflicts do not experience logical conflicts, and since packets which may experience logical conflicts do not experience resource conflicts, deadlock-free operation may be achieved. Additionally, nodes within the computer system may be configured to preallocate resources to process response packets. Some response packets may have logical conflicts with other response packets, and hence would normally not be allocable to the same virtual channel. However, by preallocating response-processing resources, response packets are accepted by the destination node. Thus, any resource conflicts which may occur are temporary (as the response packets which make forward progress are processable). Viewed in another way, response packets may be logically independent if the destination node is capable of processing the response packets upon receipt. Accordingly, a response virtual channel is formed to which each response packet belongs.