Method and apparatus for handling I/O messages

For a telecommunication system having a processor subsystem on which plural software applications reside and a memory subsystem, a method of managing said memory subsystem for handling input/output (“I/O”) messages for said plural software applications, comprising the steps of:

• associating each software application with a software buffer memory section and a message buffer memory section in said memory subsystem;
• receiving, at said memory subsystem, a received I/O message to be handled by one of said plural software applications, said received I/O message needed to be pre-processed and stored in said memory subsystem;
• identifying a first software application to handle said received I/O message based on information present in the received message;
• storing said received I/O message in the software buffer memory section associated with said first software application;
• pre-processing said received I/O message with said first software application and storing said pre-processed I/O message at the message buffer memory section associated with said first software application of said memory subsystem, and
• processing said pre-processed message using said first software application;
• wherein said software buffer memory section and said message buffer memory section do not overlap on each other;
• and
• wherein the above steps eliminate a need of temporarily pre-processing and storing said pre-processed message in a shared buffer memory of said memory subsystem.

A switch for a telecommunications network, comprising:

• a processor subsystem;
• one or more call processor applications residing on said processor subsystem;
• a memory subsystem, coupled to said processor subsystem, for receiving input/output (“I/O”) messages for later handling by said one or more call processor applications, each of said one or more applications assigned with a memory section;
• and
• means for selecting one of said one or more call processor applications to pre-process one of said received I/O messages such that one of said received I/O messages is pre-processed into a preprocessed message,
• means for storing said pre-processed message in the memory section assigned to said selected application upon receiving one of said received I/O messages, and
• means for retrieving said pre-processed message from said memory section for processing by said selected application that performed the pre-processing;
• wherein the respective memory sections do not overlap on each other;
• and
• wherein the above steps eliminate a need of temporarily pre-processing and storing said pre-processed message in a shared memory space of said memory subsystem.