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:
Oct. 13, 2009
Filed:
Dec. 19, 2006
Brian D. Hutsell, Fort Worth, TX (US);
James M. Van Dyke, Austin, TX (US);
Brian D. Hutsell, Fort Worth, TX (US);
James M. Van Dyke, Austin, TX (US);
NVIDIA Corporation, Santa Clara, CA (US);
Abstract
An arbiter decides to grant access from multiple clients to a shared resource (e.g. memory) using efficiency and/or urgency terms. Urgency for a client may be determined based on an 'in-band' request identifier transmitted from the client to the resource along with the request, and an 'out-of-band' request identifier that is buffered by the client. A difference between the out-of-band request identifier and the in-band request identifier indicates the location of the request in the client buffer. A small difference indicates that the request is near the end of the buffer (high urgency), and a large difference indicates that the request is far back in the buffer (low urgency). Efficiency terms include metrics on resource overhead, such as time needed to switch between reading/writing data from/to memory via a shared memory bus, or bank management overhead such as time for switching between DRAM banks.