Table-driven hardware control system

A method for processing a request to program a device in a data processing system having an operating system (OS) executed therein, the method comprising:

• indexing the request to a data structure containing information cross-referencing a list of actions associated with the request, the data structure linking with at least one table having data information related to the list of actions, the at least one table being independent of the OS and the device;
• looking up at least one table to retrieve the data information related to the list of actions;
• interpreting the data information retrieved from the at least one table;
• generating an instruction stream based on the interpretation, the instruction stream representing the list of actions a function carries out;
• and
• instructing a function to program the device based on the instruction stream, operation of the function being independent of the device, wherein each action of the instruction stream comprises:
• a device register type;
• a device register index;
• and
• a data value being programmed to a device register identified by the device register type and device register index.

A method for processing a request to program a device in a data processing system having an operating system (OS) executed therein, the method comprising:

• indexing the request to a data structure containing information cross-referencing a list of actions associated with the request, the data structure linking with at least one table having data information related to the list of actions, the at least one table being independent of the OS and the device;
• looking up at least one table to retrieve the data information related to the list of actions;
• interpreting the data information retrieved from the at least one table;
• generating an instruction stream based on the interpretation, the instruction stream representing the list of actions a function carries out;
• and
• instructing a function to program the device based on the instruction stream, operation of the function being independent of the device, wherein the instruction stream comprises pseudo codes to be executed to carry out a specific operation, the pseudo codes being independent of the OS and the device.

A method for processing a request to program a device in a data processing system having an operating system (OS) executed therein, the method comprising:

• indexing the request to a data structure containing information cross-referencing a list of actions associated with the request, the data structure linking with at least one table having data information related to the list of actions, the at least one table being independent of the OS and the device;
• looking up at least one table to retrieve the data information related to the list of actions;
• and
• instructing a function to program the device based on the data information retrieved from the at least one table, operation of the function being independent of the device, wherein the at least one table comprises at least one of the following tables:
• a register type table for defining types of the device registers;
• a power-on self test (POST) action table for defining sequences of action taken during an initialization;
• an array of scratch field tables having a plurality of scratch fields to store inputted values;
• an array of data tables;
• and
• an array of status word tables, each having a transition record linking with at least one data tables corresponding to the scratch fields of determined by a scratch field table.

An apparatus for processing a request to program a device in a data processing system having an operating system (OS) executed therein, the apparatus comprising:

• a data structure indexed by the request operable to provide information cross-referencing a list of actions associated with the request;
• at least one table linked with the data structure, the at least one table having data information related to the list of actions, the at least one table being independent of the OS and the device;
• and
• a function operable to program the device based on the data information retrieved from the at least one table, operation of the function being independent of the device, wherein the data structure and the at least one table are loaded and unloaded dynamically.

A tangible machine-readable medium having executable code to cause a machine to perform a method for processing a request to program a device in a data processing system having an operating system (OS) executed therein, the method comprising:

• initializing the device based on a list of actions maintained by at least one table, the list of actions being independent of the OS and the device;
• indexing the request to a data structure containing information cross-referencing the list of actions associated with the request, the data structure linking with the at least one table having data information related to the list of actions, the at least one table being independent of the OS and the device;
• looking up the at least one table to retrieve the data information related to the list of actions;
• and
• instructing a function to program the device based on the data information retrieved from the at least one table, operation of the function being independent of the device.

A data processing system, comprising:

• at least one processor;
• and
• a memory coupled to the at least one processor, the memory having an operating system (OS) executed therein and the memory storing instructions, which when executed by the at least one processor, cause the at least one processor to perform the operations of:
• initializing a device based on a list of actions maintained by at least one table, the list of actions being independent of the OS and the device;
• indexing the request to a data structure containing information cross-referencing the list of actions associated with a request, the data structure linking with the at least one table having data information related to the list of actions, the at least one table being independent of the OS and the device being programmed;
• looking up the at least one table to retrieve the data information related to the list of actions;
• and
• instructing a function to program the device based on the data information retrieved from the at least one table, operation of the function being independent of the device.