Patent · US Expired

Method, apparatus, system and computer program product for initializing a data structure at its first active use

US6148302A · kind A · utility

25Cited by
8References
32Claims
0Family size

Assignee

Inventors

Key dates

Filing dateFeb 26, 1998
Grant dateNov 14, 2000
Priority date
Expiry dateFeb 26, 2018

Classification

  • Technology area (CPC Y)Emerging Cross-Sectional Technologies
  • CPC primaryY10S707/99945
  • WIPO fieldComputer technology
  • WIPO sectorElectrical engineering

Abstract

Apparatus, methods, systems and computer program products are disclosed that provide an efficient mechanism for invoking a programmed operation at the first active use of the OOP object or data structure. The programmed operation can be used to initialize an object-oriented programming (OOP) object or data structure. The first active use of the data structure or OOP object is detected because the initial access mechanism is constrained to cause a misaligned memory access fault (trap) by attempting a non-byte access-mode memory access to an odd byte address. As the fault is processed, the access mechanism is converted so that the initial and subsequent non-byte access-mode memory accesses will succeed. In addition, the OOP object or data structure is initialized. Then the initial access attempt is repeated on the just initialized OOP object or data structure using the converted access mechanism. The use of the invention improves the performance of computers by reducing the overhead involved with particular computational operations.

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