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US 6,178,423 B1Granted
System and method for recycling numerical values in a computer system
AssigneeMicrosoft Corporation
InventorsJohn R. Douceur, Yoram Bernet, Ofer Bar
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AssigneeMicrosoft Corporation
InventorsJohn R. Douceur, Yoram Bernet, Ofer Bar
Estimating the term…
The present invention is embodied in a system and method for generating and validating reference handles for consumers requiring access to resources in a computer system. The system of the present invention includes a resource manager having a handle administrator, a plurality of consumers, and a plurality of resources. The handle administrator includes an assignment routine, a release routine, and a dereference routine. The assignment routine issues new handles, the release routine releases handles that are no longer required (thus rendering the handle invalid), and the dereference routine dereferences handles into a pointer to a resource, which entails verifying that the handle is valid. Also included is an auxiliary sub-routine for managing used and unused records, an expansion sub-routine for efficiently expanding the handle database, a handle recycling sub-routine for recycling handles, a contraction sub-routine for efficiently contracting the handle database, a hysteresis sub-routine for probabilistically contracting the handle database, and a memory allocation failure sub-routine to improve functionality in the event of memory allocation failure.
In a computer system utilizing numerical values, a computer-implemented method for recycling the numerical values for generating and validating reference handles for consumers requiring access to resources in the computer system, the method comprising:
A computer-readable medium having computer-executable components for causing a computer system using numerical values to function as a recycling system for recycling the numerical values for generating and validating reference handles for consumers requiring access to resources in the computer system, the recycling system comprising:
In a computer system using numerical values a computer-implemented recycling system for recycling the numerical values for generating and validating reference handles for consumers requiring access to resources in the computer system, the recyclinq system comprising an issue module preprogrammed to issue the numerical values in an approximately sequential order and an invalidation module preprogrammed to prevent a total number of issued numerical values from exceeding an available number of unique numerical values by invalidating at least one numerical value that issued in a first portion of the sequence not within a validation range that includes all values that are greater than a base value and that do not exceed a threshold value and to make invalid values available for reissuance, wherein the invalid values are recycled.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.