Patent · US Expired

Method for generating an internet protocol suite checksum in a single macro instruction

US5701316A · kind A · utility

99Cited by
6References
21Claims
0Family size

Assignee

Inventors

Key dates

Filing dateAug 31, 1995
Grant dateDec 23, 1997
Priority date
Expiry dateAug 31, 2015

Classification

  • Technology area (CPC H)Electricity
  • CPC primaryH04L69/324
  • WIPO fieldDigital communication
  • WIPO sectorElectrical engineering

Abstract

An Internet checksum for use by TCP/IP is generated in a single macro-instruction called a Block Add Octets instruction. Extraneous overhead of macro-instruction looping and bit masking is eliminated by combining checksum operations into a single macro-instruction using a block add approach. The programmer specifies the address in memory and the number of double-words of message data to be added together within a single instance of the Block Add Octets instruction so that looping and jump/branch instructions are not needed. The Block Add Octets instruction fetches all octets (8-bit data segments) contained in full double words from memory and adds them into the checksum. The method handles partial double words of data, full double words, and odd numbers of double words, whereby a double word consists of four octets. The checksum is calculated using one's complement arithmetic rather than two's complement, thereby increasing the speed of checksum calculation because the "end around carry" is eliminated. The number of octets that can be added to the checksum per processor cycle is greatly increased, thereby significantly improving overall TCP/IP performance.

Source: USPTO / EPO open patent data. Objective bibliographic and citation counts.