Unit status reporting protocol
AssigneeNVIDIA Corporation
InventorsMichael C. Shebanow, Robert C. Keller, Richard A. Silkebakken
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
A unit status reporting protocol may also be used for context switching, debugging, and removing deadlock conditions in a processing unit. A processing unit is in one of five states: empty, active, stalled, quiescent, and halted. The state that a processing unit is in is reported to a front end monitoring unit to enable the front end monitoring unit to determine when a context switch may be performed or when a deadlock condition exists. The front end monitoring unit can issue a halt command to perform a context switch or take action to remove a deadlock condition and allow processing to resume.
Claims20
A method for reporting status of a processing unit to a front end monitoring unit, comprising:
- asserting an active status signal from the processing unit to the front end monitoring unit when inputs are active, outputs are produced, a memory access is pending, or the processing unit is processing data;
- asserting an empty status signal from the processing unit to the front end monitoring unit when inputs are not active, outputs are not produced, a memory access is not pending, and the processing unit is not processing data;
- and
- asserting a stalled status signal from the processing unit to the front end monitoring unit when inputs are active and the processing unit can process the inputs.
A computing device configured to process multiple contexts, the computing device comprising:
- a front end monitoring unit;
- and
- a processing unit coupled to the front end monitoring unit and configured to:
- assert an active status signal from the processing unit to the front end monitoring unit when inputs are active, outputs are produced, a memory access is pending, or the processing unit is processing data;
- assert an empty status signal from the processing unit to the front end monitoring unit when inputs are not active, outputs are not produced, a memory access is not pending, and the processing unit is not processing data;
- and
- assert a stalled status signal from the processing unit to the front end monitoring unit when inputs are active and the processing unit can process the inputs.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.