Managing a plurality of processors as devices

• US 7,523,157 B2
• Filed: 09/25/2003
• Issued: 04/21/2009
• Est. Priority Date: 09/25/2003
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Marvell Asia Pte Limited (Marvell Technology Group Limited)
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: Nutter, Mark Richard, Day, Michael Norman, Stafford, James Michael, Aguilar, Maximino Jr.
• Primary Examiner(s): Flynn; Nathan
• Assistant Examiner(s): JEAN GILLES, JUDE
• Application Number:
  US10/670,823
• Publication Number:
  US 20050091473A1
• Time in Patent Office: 2,035 Days
• Field of Search: 709/202, 714 1- 5, 714/11, 714/26
• US Class Current: 709/202
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2209/509 Offload
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/5027 the resource being a machine, e.g. CPUs, Servers, Terminals

Abstract

Managing a computer system'"'"'s multiple processors as devices. The operating system accesses the multiple processors using processor device modules loaded into the operating system to facilitate a communication between an application requesting access to a processor and the processor. A device-like access is determined for accessing each one of the processors similar to device-like access for other devices in the system such as disk drives, printers, etc. An application seeking access to a processor issues device-oriented instructions for processing data, and in addition, the application provides the processor with the data to be processed. The processor processes the data according to the instructions provided by the application.

Claims

1. A computer-implemented method for managing processors as system devices, the method comprising:

executing an operating system by one or more first processors included in a group of heterogeneous processors;

loading a device module corresponding to one or more secondary processors included in the group of heterogeneous processors into the operating system, wherein the first processors are of a first processor type and the second processors are of a second processor type;

loading an application using the operating system, the application including device-oriented instructions adapted to control the one or more of the secondary processors;

setting up a device-like access path for a selected secondary processor, the device-like access path being used by the application to access the selected secondary processor;

executing the application on one of the first processors;

detecting a device call from the application, wherein the device call is a request from the application to load device-oriented instructions to the selected secondary processor;

in response to the detecting, loading the device-oriented instructions to a system memory accessible by the selected secondary processor;

performing the device-oriented instructions at the selected secondary processor;

in response to the performing, storing processed data in an output buffer in the system memory;

notifying the operating system that the device-oriented instructions have been performed; and

reading, by the application, the processed data from the output buffer.

2. The method of claim 1, further comprising creating a configuration file, the configuration file containing a list of one or more of the secondary processors and a corresponding device-like access set up for each of the one or more secondary processors.

3. The method of claim 2, further comprising determining for which of the one or more of the secondary processor the application'"'"'s device-oriented instructions are intended.

4. The method of claim 3, wherein the determining is performed using information from the configuration file.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein the loading the device module facilitates a communication between the application and one or more of the secondary processors by extending the operating system.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein the performing the device-oriented instructions comprises the selected secondary processor processing application-provided data according to the application'"'"'s device-oriented instructions.