Virtual processor methods and apparatus with unified event notification and consumer-produced memory operations

A virtual processor, comprising

• one or more virtual processing units executing on one or more processors, each virtual processing unit executing one or more processes or threads (collectively, “threads”), wherein each thread is any of constrained or not constrained to execute on a same virtual processing unit and/or a same processor during a life of that thread,
• one or more tables associating each of a plurality of events with the threads, wherein the events include any of hardware interrupt and pending memory operations,
• an event delivery mechanism, in communication coupling with the one or more threads and with the one or more tables, the event delivery mechanism responding to event occurrences by selectively notifying the respective, associated threads of those occurrences,
• one or more of the threads responding to such notifications without intervention of an operating system kernel.

A virtual processor comprising

• one or more virtual processing units executing on one or more processors, each virtual processing unit executing one or more processes or threads (collectively, “threads”), wherein each thread is any of constrained or not constrained to execute on a same virtual processing unit and/or a same processor during a life of that thread,
• at least one of the threads executing a memory reference instruction and suspending while awaiting completion thereof,
• an event delivery mechanism in communication coupling with the threads, the event delivery mechanism (i) associating each of one or more events events with a respective thread, and (ii) selectively notifying such a respective thread of an occurrence of such an associated event, regardless of which virtual processing unit and/or processor that thread is executing on, the events including memory events and at least one of hardware interrupts and software-initiated signaling events,
• the event delivery mechanism including a pending memory operation table that (i) establishes associations between one or more pending memory operations and respective threads that have suspended while awaiting completion thereof, (ii) signals a memory event for a thread for which all pending memory operations have completed.

A virtual processor comprising

• a plurality of processes and/or threads (collectively, “threads”) executing in a plurality of virtual processing units, themselves, executing on one or more processors, wherein each thread is any of constrained or not constrained to execute on a same virtual processing unit and/or a same processor during a life of that thread,
• an event queue, in communication coupling with the threads and with one or more hardware devices, the event queue staging event occurrences including at least hardware interrupts signaled by those hardware devices,
• an event delivery mechanism, in communication coupling with the threads and with the event queue, the event delivery mechanism (i) associating each of one or more events events with a respective thread, and (ii) selectively notifying such a respective thread of an occurrence of such an associated event, the events including at least hardware interrupts,
• one or more threads responding to respective such notifications concurrently with one another, those threads responding to a hardware interrupt by (i) accessing the event queue to determine the occurrence which gave rise to the notification and (ii) handling that occurrence.

In a digital data processor, the improvement for dataflow-based synchronization comprising:

• a plurality of processes and/or threads (collectively, “threads”),
• a memory having one or more accessible memory locations in communication coupling with the plurality of threads, at least a selected memory location having an associated state and being capable of storing a datum for access by one or more of the threads, the state including any of a full state and an empty state,
• a selected thread executing a first memory instruction that references the selected memory location and that, if the selected location is associated with the empty state, causes the selected thread to suspend until at least the selected location becomes associated with the full state,
• wherein the plurality of threads are resident on one or more processing units, the further improvement wherein the suspended thread is made at least temporarily nonresident on the one or more processing units.

A virtual processor comprising

• a memory,
• one or more virtual processing units in communications coupling with the memory,
• the virtual processing units executing on the one or more processors, each virtual processing unit executing one or more processes or threads (collectively, “threads”), wherein each thread is any of constrained or not constrained to execute on a same virtual processing unit and/or a same processor during a life of that thread,
• a selected thread executing a first memory instruction that references a selected location in the memory and that, if the selected location is associated with the empty state, causes the selected thread to suspend until at least the selected location becomes associated with the full state,
• comprising an event queue, in communication coupling with the threads, the event queue staging event occurrences including at least software events enqueued by the threads.

In a digital data processor, the improvement for event processing comprising

• a plurality of processes and/or threads (collectively, “threads”) executing on one or more processors,
• an event delivery mechanism, in communication coupling with a plurality of threads, the event delivery mechanism (i) associating each of one or more events with a respective thread, and (ii) selectively notifying such a respective thread of an occurrence of such an associated event,
• at least selected active threads responding to respective such notifications concurrently with one another,
• the further improvement wherein at least selected threads respond to respective notifications by transitioning from a suspended state to an executing state.