Replicated resource management system for managing resources in a distributed application and maintaining a relativistic view of state

• US 6,324,590 B1
• Filed: 03/31/2000
• Issued: 11/27/2001
• Est. Priority Date: 01/11/1996
• Status: Expired due to Term

• Current Assignee: Google LLC (Alphabet Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Cabletron Systems Incorporated (Extreme Networks, Inc.)
• Inventors: Jeffords, Jason, Dev, Roger
• Primary Examiner(s): COURTENAY III, ST JOHN
• Application Number:
  US09/539,752
• Time in Patent Office: 606 Days
• Field of Search: 709/104, 709/310-332, 707/103
• US Class Current: 719/316
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/50 Allocation of resources, e.g. of the central processing unit [CPU]

Abstract

A method and apparatus for accessing resource objects contained in a distributed memory space in a communications network, including dividing the distributed memory space into a plurality of memory pools, each pool containing a collection of resource objects, providing a plurality of resource manager objects, each resource manager object having an associated set of memory pools and a registry of network unique identifiers for the resource objects in those pools, and accessing a given resource object via its network identifier. Another aspect of the invention is to provide a relativistic view of state of a plurality of objects, each object generating a state vector representing that object'"'"'s view of its own state and the state of all other objects, each object sending its state vector to other objects, and each object maintaining a state matrix of the state vectors.

Claims

1. A method of maintaining a relativistic view of state of a plurality of distributed resource objects comprising:

each resource object having a logical object name, a logical object state, and access to a method for communicating with other objects;

each resource object generating a state vector representing that object'"'"'s view of its own state and the state of all other objects, the state vector comprising a one-dimensional associative array of logical object name to logical object state, wherein the logical object name is an index into the vector and the logical object state is stored in a slot associated with the index;

each resource object sending its state vector to the other resource objects; and

each resource object maintaining a state matrix comprising a two-dimensional associative array of the state vectors having rows and columns indexed by logical object names.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the state matrix is determined to be “

row determinant”

if and only if each of its row state vectors arc determinant, and the state matrix is determined to be “

column determinant”

if and only if each of its column state vectors are determinant.

3. The method of claim 1, further comprising providing a plurality of processes, each process having an associated set of resource objects, each resource object having attributes and methods, and the plurality of processes confirming the existence of a determinant state matrix prior to using attributes and methods of the resource objects in order to provide a distributed processing function.

4. The method of claim 1, further comprising applying application specific logic to the state vectors by deriving application specific objects.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein the logical object state of each resource object represents a contact status having one of three possible conditions:

(a) no information about the object has been obtained,

(b) contact with the object has been established; and

(c) contact with a previously contacted object has been lost.

6. The method of claim 2, wherein the state matrix is determined to be “

fully determinant”

if and only if it is both row determinant and column determinant.

7. The method of claim 4, further comprising applying application specific logic to the state matrices by deriving application specific objects.

8. The method of claim 5, wherein when the contact status of an object changes, the object sends a state vector describing the changed state to all other objects with which it has established contact.

9. The method of claim 7, wherein the application specific objects are used to determine a contact status of processes in a distributed processing function.