Multiplex communications – Data flow congestion prevention or control – Control of data admission to the network
Reexamination Certificate
2000-05-26
2001-12-11
Ngo, Ricky (Department: 2664)
Multiplex communications
Data flow congestion prevention or control
Control of data admission to the network
C370S235000, C370S468000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06330225
ABSTRACT:
FIELD OF THE INVENTION
The present invention relates to a communications system to couple computing subsystems.
BACKGROUND OF INVENTION
Electronic computing and communication systems continue to include a greater number of features and to increase in complexity. At the same time, electronic computing and communications systems tend to decrease in physical size and cost per function.
Rapid advances in semiconductor technology have enabled true “system-on-a-chip” designs. These complex designs may incorporate, for example, one or more processor cores, a digital signal processing core, several communications interfaces, and graphics support in application-specific logic. These extremely complex subsystems must communicate with one another. Significant new challenges arise in the integration, verification, and testing of such systems because efficient communication must take place between subsystems on a single complex chip as well as between chips on a system board.
One way to achieve efficient communication is to have a separate communication subsystem with individual functional blocks tying into the communication subsystem via a well-specified standard interface. One benefit of having a well-defined separation of the communication subsystem is that the functional blocks can be reused in other systems with a minimum of redesign.
One challenge in the integration, verification, and testing of modern electronic systems stems from the fact that modern electronic systems in many application areas have functionality, cost, and form-factor requirements that mandate the sharing of resources among multiple functional blocks. Examples of such shared resources are processors, memory and the communication subsystem itself. In such systems, the functional blocks typically possess different performance characteristics and requirements, and the communications system and shared resources must simultaneously satisfy total requirements in order for the entire system to meet its performance specifications. Different data flows between different functional blocks in the system have different performance requirements. Key requirements of such data flows are bandwidth and latency, and these can vary over several orders of magnitude between different data flows. Different data flows thus impose different quality-of-service requirements on the functional blocks and communications subsystem.
The traditional approach to the problem of meeting system requirements in the face of diverse quality-of-service requirements for different data flows has been to overdesign the shared resources or to provide dedicated resources for different data flows. For example, instead of designing a communications subsystem that can provide differential quality of service to three different data flows involving the memory system, designers instead build three separate communications systems to three separate ports of the memory system. While meeting the required performance characteristics, this design style may also make the system too large or too costly to be practical.
Another problem with today's approaches to designing systems with diverse quality of service requirements is that the methods employed do not lend themselves to analysis prior to actual implementation. Systems are built and then simulated to measure the attained performance of different data flows under different conditions. The result is that the designer can never be sure that the performance requirements are met under all conditions, since it is typically impractical to simulate the entire system under all possible conditions.
What is needed is a methodology for designing and integrating functional blocks and communication subsystems that yields a system with predictable and differential quality of service guarantees for different data flows while at the same time minimizing the size and cost of the components and the entire system.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
The present invention achieves predictable system-wide differential quality of service guarantees for different data flows using a methodology of requiring individual components (e.g., functional blocks, communication subsystems, and the interfaces between them) to provide quality of service guarantees on different data channels and then aggregating these component guarantees into system-wide guarantees.
Given a set of components that each give different quality of service guarantees on different data channels, components are composed into a system. In one embodiment, the system-wide data flows are mapped to the data channels provided by each component. The quality of service guarantees given by each component are aligned or translated into a common set of units for the entire system. The individual quality of service guarantees are aggregated to yield system-wide quality of service guarantees for each individual data flow.
REFERENCES:
patent: 5469433 (1995-11-01), McAuley
patent: 6141355 (2000-10-01), Palmer et al.
patent: 6198724 (2001-03-01), Lam et al.
patent: 6215789 (2001-04-01), Keenan et al.
patent: 6216797 (2001-04-01), Fellman et al.
Aras Richard
Weber Wolf-Dietrich
Wingard Drew E.
Blakely , Sokoloff, Taylor & Zafman LLP
Ngo Ricky
Sonics, Inc.
LandOfFree
Communication system and method for different quality of... does not yet have a rating. At this time, there are no reviews or comments for this patent.
If you have personal experience with Communication system and method for different quality of..., we encourage you to share that experience with our LandOfFree.com community. Your opinion is very important and Communication system and method for different quality of... will most certainly appreciate the feedback.
Profile ID: LFUS-PAI-O-2577973