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US 5,293,486 AGranted
Deterministic method for allocation of a shared resource
AssigneeDigital Equipment Corporation
InventorsMichele A. Jordan, Diarmiud J. Donnelly
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Abstract
A method and apparatus for fairly allocating a shared resource among N operating devices of a computer system. The resource allocation is implemented by operating the shared resource to process data for each of the N operating devices in a round robin manner, through a series of time slots. The shared resource processes up to a fixed maximum amount of data during each time slot.
Claims6
A method for allocating a shared resource among N operating devices in a computer system, the method comprising the steps of:
- providing a plurality of buffers;
- allocating preselected sets of the plurality of buffers to the N operating devices, one of the preselected sets of the plurality of buffers being allocated to one of the N operating devices for the storage of data relating to the respective one of the N operating devices;
- operating the shared resource to poll the plurality of buffers in a round robin scheme, through a series of time slots, for processing of data stored in the plurality of buffers;
- and
- operating the shared resource during each time slot to process data stored in at least one buffer of one of the preselected sets of buffers and to continue to process data in a second and subsequent buffers of the one of the preselected sets of buffers so long as the total amount of data processed in the time slot is less than a predetermined maximum amount of data.
2 more elements
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.