System and method to accelerate identification of hardware platform classes
AssigneeNVIDIA Corporation
InventorsAndrew Currid, Mark A. Overby
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
One embodiment of the present invention sets forth a technique for concisely identifying the hardware configuration of a computer system through a single signature value. This signature value is computed by passing specific hardware configuration information through a hashing function. The hardware configuration information may include, among other things, selected elements of the SMBIOS system description as well as PCI topology and PCI bus type information.
Claims18
A method for uniquely identifying a hardware configuration of a computer system, the method comprising:
- gathering data from a system management basic input-output system (SMBIOS) device list generated for the computer system;
- probing a bus within the computer system to determine a bus topology and to assign a unique identifier to each device coupled to the bus;
- accessing configuration space registers of each device coupled to the bus to determine a bus type;
- and
- computing a signature value for the computer system based on at least the data gathered from the SMBIOS device list, the bus topology, and the bus type wherein the step of computing the signature value comprises passing the data gathered from the SMBIOS device list, the bus topology, and the bus type through a hash function, and wherein the signature value is smaller in size than the data gathered from the SMBIOS device list, the bus topology, and the bus type.
A computer system configured for uniquely identifying a hardware configuration of a computer system, the computer system comprising:
- one or more central processing units (CPUs);
- one or more graphics processing units (GPUs);
- at least one bus that couples the one or more CPUs to the one or more GPUs;
- and
- a signature generator configured to:
- gather data from a system management basic input-output system (SMBIOS) device list generated for the computer system;
- probe a bus within the computer system to determine a bus topology and to assign a unique identifier to each device coupled to the bus;
- access configuration space registers of each device coupled to the bus to determine a bus type;
- and
- compute a signature value for the computer system based on at least the data gathered from the SMBIOS device list, the bus topology, and the bus type wherein the step of computing the signature value comprises passing the data gathered from the SMBIOS device list, the bus topology, and the bus type through a hash function, and wherein the signature value is smaller in size than the data gathered from the SMBIOS device list, the bus topology, and the bus type.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.