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:
Dec. 27, 2005
Filed:
Dec. 19, 2002
William A. Stevens, Jr., Folsom, CA (US);
Alberto J. Martinez, El Dorado Hills, CA (US);
Christopher J. Spiegel, El Dorado Hills, CA (US);
William A. Stevens, Jr., Folsom, CA (US);
Alberto J. Martinez, El Dorado Hills, CA (US);
Christopher J. Spiegel, El Dorado Hills, CA (US);
Intel Corporation, Santa Clara, CA (US);
Abstract
A Bus Driver implements an arbitration mechanism to allow both the system management interrupt (SMI) and the Bus Driver to cooperatively use a Bus host controller hardware. This mechanism employs a hardware-based semaphore (status bit) to allow either the SMI or the driver to claim ownership of the Bus host controller for an arbitrary period of time. While either the SMI or the driver may own the status bit, the other party must poll the bit until ownership is achieved. For the SMI, this involves scheduling a periodic SMI interrupt. The driver performs self arbitration of claiming the status bit to provide the periodic SMI interrupt the opportunity to claim the bit. The mechanism allows the SMI access to the Bus host controller in a 'timely' manner, while minimizing impact to driver access to the Bus host controller, which could impact driver Bus transaction throughput.