Method and apparatus for selecting a nonblocked interrupt reques

Details Method and apparatus for selecting a nonblocked interrupt reques Method and apparatus for selecting a nonblocked interrupt reques

1997-03-20

1999-05-18

Sheikh, Ayaz R.

395735, 395740, 395672, G06F9/46

Patent

active

059058978

ABSTRACT:
An interrupt processing method and apparatus particularly well-suited for use in an interrupt controller of a multiprocessor system or device. Each of the interrupt requests has at least one destination processor associated therewith for servicing the interrupt request. An interrupt controller in accordance with the present invention applies latched interrupt requests to a priority compare tree which serves to prioritize received interrupt requests. A number of higher priority requests, including the highest priority request, are supplied to a destination selection circuit which includes an interrupt dispatcher which determines a processor to which the first priority interrupt request will be dispatched. Similar determinations are made for the remaining identified interrupt requests, but with the corresponding destination register contents masked to prevent processors already selected to receive a higher priority interrupt from being considered for a lower priority interrupt. The destination selection circuit attempts to determine a unique destination processor for each of the highest priority interrupt requests, such that these multiple interrupt requests can therefore be dispatched to different processors simultaneously. One or more of the interrupt requests may be "blocked" during a particular time period because all destination processors which could service the blocked requests are already processing other interrupts, performing higher priority tasks or are otherwise unavailable. These blocked interrupt requests are identified and the corresponding destination registers are masked such that the remaining non-blocked interrupt requests can be delivered to an available destination processor.

REFERENCES:
patent: 4438489 (1984-03-01), Heinrich et al.
patent: 4495569 (1985-01-01), Kagawa
patent: 4546430 (1985-10-01), Moore et al.
patent: 4959781 (1990-09-01), Rubinstein et al.
patent: 5101497 (1992-03-01), Culley et al.
patent: 5109512 (1992-04-01), Bahr et al.
patent: 5125093 (1992-06-01), MFarland
patent: 5179707 (1993-01-01), Piepho
patent: 5283904 (1994-02-01), Carson et al.
patent: 5293620 (1994-03-01), Barabash et al.
patent: 5515538 (1996-05-01), Kleiman
patent: 5555430 (1996-09-01), Gephardt et al.
patent: 5560019 (1996-09-01), Narad
patent: 5590328 (1996-12-01), Seno et al
patent: 5613128 (1997-03-01), Nizar et al.
patent: 5689713 (1997-11-01), Normoyle et al.
patent: 5742823 (1998-04-01), Edwards et al.

Affiliated with

Also associated with

Rating

Method and apparatus for selecting a nonblocked interrupt reques does not yet have a rating. At this time, there are no reviews or comments for this patent.

If you have personal experience with Method and apparatus for selecting a nonblocked interrupt reques, we encourage you to share that experience with our LandOfFree.com community. Your opinion is very important and Method and apparatus for selecting a nonblocked interrupt reques will most certainly appreciate the feedback.

Rate now

Comments { 0 }

Profile ID: LFUS-PAI-O-1768233