Technique for efficiently transferring moderate amounts of data across address space boundary
US6601146B2 · kind B2 · utility
Assignee
Inventors
Key dates
| Filing date | Jun 16, 1998 |
| Grant date | Jul 29, 2003 |
| Priority date | — |
| Expiry date | Jun 16, 2018 |
Classification
- Technology area (CPC H)Electricity
- CPC primaryH04L9/40
- WIPO fieldDigital communication
- WIPO sectorElectrical engineering
Abstract
A method and apparatus for performing efficient interprocess communication (IPC) in a computer system. With this invention, a memory region called the IPC transfer region is shared among all processes of the system to enable more efficient IPC. The unique physical address of the region is mapped into a virtual address from each of the address spaces of the processes of the system. When one of the processes needs to transfer data to another of the processes, the first process stores arguments describing the data in the region using the virtual address in its address space that maps into the unique physical address. When the other or second process needs to receive the data, the second process reads the data from the second region using the virtual address in its memory space that maps into the unique physical address. With this invention, in most cases, control of the IPC transfer region occurs automatically without any kernel intervention.
Source: USPTO / EPO open patent data. Objective bibliographic and citation counts.