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:
Nov. 15, 2011
Filed:
May. 15, 2007
Neill M. Clift, Kirkland, WA (US);
Arun U. Kishan, Bellevue, WA (US);
Neill M. Clift, Kirkland, WA (US);
Arun U. Kishan, Bellevue, WA (US);
Microsoft Corporation, Redmond, WA (US);
Abstract
A barrier with local spinning. The barrier is described as a barrier object having a bit vector embedded as a pointer. If the vector bit is zero, the object functions as a counter; if the vector bit is one, the object operates as a pointer to a stack. The object includes the total number of threads required to rendezvous at the barrier to trigger release of the threads. The object points to a stack block list that describes each thread that has arrived at the barrier. Arriving at the barrier involves reading the top stack block, pushing onto the list a stack block for the thread that just arrived, decrementing the thread count, and spinning on corresponding local memory locations or timing out and blocking. When the last thread arrives at the barrier, the barrier is reset and all threads at the barrier are awakened for the start of the next process.