Schedule and data caching for wireless transmission

• US 7,844,760 B2
• Filed: 09/29/2007
• Issued: 11/30/2010
• Est. Priority Date: 09/29/2007
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Intel Corporation
• Original Assignee: Intel Corporation
• Inventors: Hiremath, Indudharswamy, Jeyaseelan, Jaya L.
• Primary Examiner(s): Tsai; Henry W.
• Assistant Examiner(s): Nam; Hyun
• Application Number:
  US11/904,933
• Publication Number:
  US 20090089459A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,158 Days
• Field of Search: 710/52, 370/412
• US Class Current: 710/52
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 13/128 for dedicated transfers to a network for protocol converters G06F13/387
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 49/90 Buffering arrangements
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 49/901 using storage descriptor, e.g. read or write pointers
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 52/0216 using a pre-established activity schedule, e.g. traffic indication frame
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 72/12 Wireless traffic scheduling
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 88/182 Network node acting on behalf of an other network entity, e.g. proxy
• CPC Class Codes: Y02D 10/00 Energy efficient computing, e.g. low power processors, power management or thermal management
• CPC Class Codes: Y02D 30/70 in wireless communication networks

Abstract

A method and apparatus for schedule and data caching for wireless transmissions. An embodiment of a method may include generating a schedule of queues for a wireless controller, the schedule being generated at a driver on a host system. In some embodiments schedule data may be cached at the wireless controller from the host system, where the cache may include active queues and page list entries for the active queues. The wireless controller may be operated using the cached queues.

Claims

1. A method comprising:

generating an asynchronous schedule of queues of wireless transactions for a wireless host controller and a table of page entries for the wireless transactions, the schedule being generated by a driver on a host platform and stored in memory on the host platform;

identifying active queues in the asynchronous schedule of queues;

caching schedule data at the wireless host controller from the host platform in a cache located in a local memory of the wireless host controller, wherein entries in the cache include;

the active queues of the schedule of queues, the active queues being stored as a loop of queues in the cache, and

a subset of the table of entries containing page list entries for the active queues;

operating the wireless host controller based on the queues in the cache, wherein operating the wireless host controller includes fetching data from the host platform to the wireless host controller or writing data to the host platform from the wireless host controller based on entries contained in the cache; and

updating the cache to reflect changes in the asynchronous schedule of queues of the host platform.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the wireless host controller is a wireless USB (Universal Serial Bus) controller.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein each queue of the schedule of queues comprises a queue set (QSet) for a transaction.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein updating the cache includes receiving a notification of a change in the active queues of the asynchronous schedule of queues, and rebuilding the cache based on the change in the active queues.

5. The method of claim 4, wherein the change in the active queues of the asynchronous schedule of queues includes one or more of adding a scheduled queue, deleting a scheduled queue, changing an inactive queue to active, or changing an active queue to inactive.

6. The method of claim 1, further comprising transitioning the host platform to a low power state while the wireless host controller operates based on the queues in the cache.

19. The method of claim 1, wherein the fetching of data from the host platform to the wireless host controller or the writing of data to the host system from the wireless host controller based on the entries in the cache including fetching or writing without fetching transfer descriptors or page list entries from the host platform.

7. A wireless host controller comprising:

a memory to hold a cache, the cache to hold active queues and page list entries for the active queues, the active queues and page list entries being cached from an asynchronous schedule of queues and a table of page entries stored on a host platform, the wireless host controller to generate a transaction group of the active queues in the cache based on transfer descriptors in the active queues; and

data queues for transmission and reception of data according to the active queues in the cache;

wherein the wireless host controller is to generate wireless transactions according to the transfer descriptors of the active queues, including the wireless host controller fetching data from the host platform or writing data to the host platform based on entries contained in the cache, and to update the cache to reflect changes in the asynchronous schedule of queues of the host platform.

8. The wireless host controller of claim 7, wherein the wireless host controller is a wireless USB (Universal Serial Bus) controller.

9. The wireless host controller of claim 8, wherein each queue of the asynchronous schedule of queues comprises a queue set (QSet) for a transaction.

10. The wireless host controller of claim 7, wherein updating the cache includes the wireless host controller updating the cache based on notifications received from the host platform regarding active queues of the asynchronous schedule of queues.

11. The wireless host controller of claim 10, wherein updating the cache include the wireless host controller rebuilding the cache upon receiving notice from the host platform regarding a change in the active queues of the asynchronous schedule of queues.

12. The wireless host controller of claim 7, wherein the wireless host controller is to consolidate accesses to host memory.

13. The wireless host controller of claim 12, further comprising one or more transmit buffers, and wherein for transmit operation the wireless host controller is operable to consolidate accessed to memory by fetching as much data from the host platform as can be fit in the one or more transmit data buffers for the wireless host controller, wherein the wireless host controller is to fetch the data from the host platform without fetching transfer descriptors or page list entries.

14. The wireless host controller of claim 12, wherein for receive operation the wireless host controller is operable to hold data until a receive queue threshold or a timeout is reached and then write the data to host memory.

20. The wireless host controller of claim 7, wherein the wireless host controller is operable to fetch data from the host platform or write the data to the host platform based on the cache without fetching transfer descriptors or page list entries from the host platform.

15. A system comprising:

a bus;

a host platform coupled to the bus, the host platform including SDRAM memory to hold a wireless controller driver, the wireless controller driver to generate an asynchronous schedule of queues of wireless transactions and a table of page entries for the wireless transactions stored in memory of the host platform; and

a USB (Universal Serial Bus) wireless host controller coupled to the bus, the USB wireless host controller including a cache in a memory on the USB wireless host controller, the cache to cache active queues from the asynchronous schedule of queues and page entries for the active queues, wherein the USB wireless host controller is to generate a transaction group based on transfer descriptors in the active queues in the cache.

16. The system of claim 15, wherein the host platform is to provide a notification to the USB wireless host controller regarding a change in the active queues in the asynchronous schedule of queues.

17. The system of claim 16, wherein the USB wireless host controller is to flush the cache and rebuild the cached schedule based on the notification received from the host platform.

18. The system of claim 15, wherein the host platform is to transition to a low power state during operation of the USB wireless host controller between data transmit and data receive transfers.