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:
Sep. 19, 2006
Filed:
Apr. 16, 2004
John W. Mitten, Cary, NC (US);
Christopher G. Riedle, Cary, NC (US);
David Richard Barach, Boxborough, MA (US);
Kenneth H. Potter, Jr., Raleigh, NC (US);
Kent Hoult, Lexington, MA (US);
Jeffery B. Scott, Cary, NC (US);
John W. Mitten, Cary, NC (US);
Christopher G. Riedle, Cary, NC (US);
David Richard Barach, Boxborough, MA (US);
Kenneth H. Potter, Jr., Raleigh, NC (US);
Kent Hoult, Lexington, MA (US);
Jeffery B. Scott, Cary, NC (US);
Cisco Technology, Inc., San Jose, CA (US);
Abstract
A buffer-management technique efficiently manages a set of data buffers accessible to first and second devices interconnected by a split transaction bus, such as a Hyper-Transport (HPT) bus. To that end, a buffer manager controls access to a set of 'free' buffer descriptors, each free buffer descriptor referencing a corresponding buffer in the set of data buffers. Advantageously, the buffer manager ensures that the first and second devices are allocated a sufficient number of free buffer descriptors for use in a HPT data path protocol in which the first and second devices have access to respective sets of free buffer descriptors. Because buffer management over the HPT bus is optimized by the buffer manager, the amount of processing bandwidth traditionally consumed managing descriptors can be reduced.