Channel mechanisms for communicating with a processor event facility

Abstract

Mechanisms for communicating with a processor event facility are provided. The mechanisms make use of a channel interface as the primary mechanism for communicating with the processor event facility. The channel interface provides channels for communicating with processor facilities, memory flow control facilities, machine state registers, and external processor interrupt facilities, for example. These channels may be designated as blocking or non-blocking. With blocking channels, when no data is available to be read from the corresponding registers, or there is no space available to write to the corresponding registers, the processor is placed in a low power 'stall' state. The processor is automatically awakened, via communication across the blocking channel, when data becomes available or space is freed. Thus, the channels of the present invention permit the processor to stay in a low power state.