Use of off-motherboard resources in a computer system
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Accused Products
Abstract
A system uses a protocol stack on a card external to a motherboard in a target computer system. A processor on the motherboard is able to make use of the external protocol stack during boot-up of the computer, or at any other time, so that it is not necessary to load the protocol stack into the motherboard'"'"'s memory. This saves time, memory, and disk space and permits an external, managing, computer system to communicate with a computer just after power-up without loading and configuring a protocol stack so that the managing computer system can control the boot-up of the target computer system. The extra memory saved, especially, is important in running many MS-DOS applications, such as firmware flash utilities. A preferred embodiment of the invention uses a UDP/Internet Protocol (UDP/IP) stack resident in a Preboot Execution Environment (PXE) on, e.g, a network card. The approach described herein can be applied to other utilities, protocol stacks or resources (hardware and software) on other cards.
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Citations
27 Claims
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1-7. -7. (canceled)
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8. A method comprising:
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receiving a request for a remote resource;
identifying the remote resource;
encapsulating the request in an internal communication message formatted for the identified remote resource; and
transmitting the internal communication message to the remote resource. - View Dependent Claims (9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15)
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16. A system comprising:
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a first circuit board comprising a resource, and a first memory comprising a resource protocol for the resource; and
a second circuit board comprising a processor configured to execute a first set of instructions configured to request the resource, a second set of instructions configured to encapsulate the resource request in an internal communications message, and transmit the internal communications message to the first circuit board. - View Dependent Claims (17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22)
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23. A computer program product comprising:
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a first set of instructions, executable on a processor, configured to encapsulate a request for data from a network node in a first internal communication message for a network card, wherein the first internal communication message comprises arguments for the network card to transmit the encapsulated request for data to the network node; and
a second set of instructions, executable on the processor, configured to transmit the first internal communication message to the network card. - View Dependent Claims (24, 25, 26, 27)
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Specification