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:
Jan. 12, 2010

Filed:

Apr. 11, 2008
Applicants:

Paresh Chatterjee, Fremont, CA (US);

Ajit Narayanan, Chennai, IN;

Loganathan Ranganathan, Fremont, CA (US);

Sharon Enoch, Newark, CA (US);

Inventors:

Paresh Chatterjee, Fremont, CA (US);

Ajit Narayanan, Chennai, IN;

Loganathan Ranganathan, Fremont, CA (US);

Sharon Enoch, Newark, CA (US);

Assignee:

American Megatrends, Inc., Norcross, GA (US);

Attorney:
Primary Examiner:
Int. Cl.
CPC ...
G06F 12/14 (2006.01); G06F 17/30 (2006.01); G06F 12/00 (2006.01);
U.S. Cl.
CPC ...
Abstract

Technologies are described for implementing locks to control I/O operations in a storage system. The lock implementations can have reduced resource requirements for memory and processing. Through the utilization of the technologies and concepts presented herein, an I/O process preparing to acquire a write lock can advertise its need for the lock for a pre-determined time before the lock is granted. The time period for advertisement can be specified so that all I/O operations that were initiated before the advertisement are guaranteed to have completed by the time the advertisement period is over. As such, a lock controller may only need to track outstanding I/Os that begin once the advertisement starts. This can reduce the typical requirement to maintain and process a lock structure for every unit of storage in the system at all times.


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