Method and apparatus to facilitate shared pointers in a heterogeneous platform

US8566537B2 · kind B2 · utility

Assignee

• Intel Corporation · US

Inventors

• Yang Ni · Les Ulis, FR
• Rajkishore Barik · Santa Clara, US
• Ali-Reza Adl-Tabatabai · Santa Clara, US
• Tatiana Shpeisman · Menlo Park, US
• Jayanth N. Rao · Folsom, US
• Ben J. Ashbaugh · Folsom, US
• Tomasz Janczak · Gdańsk, PL

Key dates

• Filing date: Mar 29, 2011
• Grant date: Oct 22, 2013
• Expiry date: Sep 9, 2031

Classification

• Technology area (CPC G): Physics
• CPC primary: G06T1/60
• WIPO field: Computer technology
• WIPO sector: Electrical engineering

Abstract

A method and apparatus to facilitate shared pointers in a heterogeneous platform. In one embodiment of the invention, the heterogeneous or non-homogeneous platform includes, but is not limited to, a central processing core or unit, a graphics processing core or unit, a digital signal processor, an interface module, and any other form of processing cores. The heterogeneous platform has logic to facilitate sharing of pointers to a location of a memory shared by the CPU and the GPU. By sharing pointers in the heterogeneous platform, the data or information sharing between different cores in the heterogeneous platform can be simplified.