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:
Aug. 15, 2006
Filed:
Apr. 04, 2000
Gordon Taylor Davis, Chapel Hill, NC (US);
Marco C. Heddes, Raleigh, NC (US);
Ross Boyd Leavens, Cary, NC (US);
Fabrice Jean Verplanken, La Gaude, FR;
Gordon Taylor Davis, Chapel Hill, NC (US);
Marco C. Heddes, Raleigh, NC (US);
Ross Boyd Leavens, Cary, NC (US);
Fabrice Jean Verplanken, La Gaude, FR;
International Business Machines Corporation, Armonk, NY (US);
Abstract
A control mechanism is established between a network processor and a tree search coprocessor to deal with latencies in accessing the data such as information formatted in a tree structure. A plurality of independent instruction execution threads are queued to enable them to have rapid access to the shared memory. If execution of a thread becomes stalled due to a latency event, full control is granted to the next thread in the queue. The grant of control is temporary when a short latency event occurs or full when a long latency event occurs. Control is returned to the original thread when a short latency event is completed. Each execution thread utilizes an instruction prefetch buffer that collects instructions for idle execution threads when the instruction bandwidth is not fully utilized by an active execution thread. The thread execution control is governed by the collective functioning of a FIFO, an arbiter and a thread control state machine.