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AssigneeInternational Business Machines Corporation
InventorsEugene P. Hefferon, Hans-Helge Lehmann, William J. Rooney, Harry M. Yudenfriend
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A method and apparatus for determining common usage of elements among at least two channels in a data processing system having an arbitrary hardware element hierarchy including multiple channel paths over which data is transmitted. An internally executed initialization program builds a bit mask for channel paths to be compared wherein the bit masks describe the hierarchy of the hardware elements in the channel paths to be compared. A compare program provides a comparison result whose value reflects the impact of the failure of hardware elements that are common to the channel path being compared. The comparison results contains multiple bits, with set bits representing each element which is common to the hardware element common to the channel paths being compared. The impact of a failure of a common hardware element is greater the more significant the bit position of that component resides in the comparison results.
In a data processing system having an arbitrary hardware element hierarchy including multiple arrangements of said hardware elements, a method of determining common usage of the hardware elements among at least two of the arrangements, said method comprising:
In a data processing system having a hardware element hierarchy including multiple arrangements of said hardware elements, an apparatus for determining common usage of the hardware elements among at least two of the arrangements, said apparatus comprising:
In a data processing system having an arbitrary hardware element hierarchy including multiple arrangements of said hardware elements, an apparatus for determining common usage of the hardware elements among at least two of the arrangements, said apparatus comprising:
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.