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:
Sep. 25, 2012
Filed:
May. 27, 2008
Daniel A. Brokenshire, Round Rock, TX (US);
Charles R. Johns, Austin, TX (US);
Mark R. Nutter, Austin, TX (US);
Barry L. Minor, Austin, TX (US);
Daniel A. Brokenshire, Round Rock, TX (US);
Charles R. Johns, Austin, TX (US);
Mark R. Nutter, Austin, TX (US);
Barry L. Minor, Austin, TX (US);
International Business Machines Corporation, Armonk, NY (US);
Abstract
A mechanism is provided for efficient communication of producer/consumer buffer status. With the mechanism, devices in a data processing system notify each other of updates to head and tail pointers of a shared buffer region when the devices perform operations on the shared buffer region using signal notification channels of the devices. Thus, when a producer device that produces data to the shared buffer region writes data to the shared buffer region, an update to the head pointer is written to a signal notification channel of a consumer device. When a consumer device reads data from the shared buffer region, the consumer device writes a tail pointer update to a signal notification channel of the producer device. In addition, channels may operate in a blocking mode so that the corresponding device is kept in a low power state until an update is received over the channel.