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:
Jul. 21, 2009

Filed:

Sep. 16, 2005
Applicants:

Jim Donald Butler, Costa Mesa, CA (US);

Michael Scully Jordan, Costa Mesa, CA (US);

Joe Chung-ping Tien, Costa Mesa, CA (US);

David James Duckman, Costa Mesa, CA (US);

Inventors:

Jim Donald Butler, Costa Mesa, CA (US);

Michael Scully Jordan, Costa Mesa, CA (US);

Joe Chung-Ping Tien, Costa Mesa, CA (US);

David James Duckman, Costa Mesa, CA (US);

Assignee:
Attorney:
Primary Examiner:
Assistant Examiner:
Int. Cl.
CPC ...
G06F 13/24 (2006.01); G06F 12/00 (2006.01);
U.S. Cl.
CPC ...
Abstract

A method and apparatus is disclosed for improving the MSI and MSI-X specifications by implementing an efficient delivery and clearing mechanism for interrupt conditions to increase performance between the driver and hardware/firmware interface while ensuring that no interrupts are lost in the process. In particular, an auto clear function is employed to eliminate the need for drivers in the host to send writes over the PCI-based bus to deassert and assert attention enable register bits and clear down attention register bits, and a fail safe mechanism is utilized to prevent lost interrupts.


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