Method and apparatus for device driver funnelling

Details Method and apparatus for device driver funnelling Method and apparatus for device driver funnelling

1995-09-29

1998-04-28

Oberley, Alvin E.

395733, G06F 1516

Patent

active

057457638

ABSTRACT:
A method and apparatus for enabling AIX device driver (DD) created for a uniprocessor (UP) system to run unchanged on a symmetrical multiprocessor system (SMP). Device drivers are processed by a funnelling mechanism so that UP device drivers always runs on a "Master" processor in a multi-processor system. New device drivers written for the SMP system are permitted to bypass the funneling mechanism and proceed directly to execution on any available processor in the SMP system. Device registration services are provided which examine DD flags looking for a new unique flag indicating that the device driver is SMP enabled. If the flag is not present, then emulating a uniprocessor environment for execution of that device driver.

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