Persisting data across warm boots

• US 9,104,619 B2
• Filed: 07/23/2010
• Issued: 08/11/2015
• Est. Priority Date: 07/23/2010
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Avago Technologies International Sales Pte Limited (Broadcom, Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Brocade Communications Systems, Inc. (Broadcom, Inc.)
• Inventors: Chin, Bill Ying, Ratner, Ilya, Desai, Tushar, Madineni, Surendranadh, Mahoney, William R.
• Primary Examiner(s): Bae, Ji H
• Application Number:
  US12/842,945
• Publication Number:
  US 20120023319A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,845 Days
• Field of Search: None
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 1/24 Resetting means
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/1417 Boot up procedures
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/1441 Resetting or repowering
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 12/00 Accessing, addressing or allocating within memory systems or architectures digital input from, or digital output to record carriers, e.g. to disk storage units, G06F3/06
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/4401 Bootstrapping security arrangements therefor G06F21/57
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/4406 Loading of operating system
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/4418 Suspend and resume; Hibernate and awake
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/445 Program loading or initiating bootstrapping G06F9/4401; security arrangements for program loading or initiating G06F21/57

Abstract

Techniques for persisting data stored in volatile memory across a warm boot. One or more portions (referred to as “warm memory”) of volatile memory of the system can be reserved and configured such that the data stored by these portions is not affected by a warm boot thereby resulting in the data stored being persisted across a warm boot.

Claims

1. A system comprising:

a processing element; and

a volatile memory associated with the processing element, the volatile memory comprising

a memory section for persisting data stored in the memory section across a warm boot of the system, the memory section comprising a first memory portion allocated for a subscriber and a second memory portion, the first memory portion storing reference information usable for accessing data stored by the subscriber in the second memory portion;

the system programmed to perform a warm boot, the warm boot causing an operating system of the system to be restarted without cycling power to the system; and

after performing the warm boot, the system further programmed to enable the subscriber to retrieve the data stored by the subscriber in the second memory portion using the reference information stored in the first memory portion.

2. The system of claim 1 wherein the processing element is a single processor, a group of processors, or a set of cores of a plurality of processors, wherein the set of cores comprises cores from one or more of the plurality of processors.

3. The system of claim 1 wherein the subscriber is an application, or a thread executed by the processing element.

4. The system of claim 1 wherein the subscriber is a device driver.

5. A network device comprising the system of claim 1.

6. The system of claim 1 wherein the system is further programmed to enable the subscriber to provide a size for the memory section that is to be allocated for the subscriber.

7. The system of claim 1 wherein the system is further programmed to enable the subscriber to use an Application Programmer Interface (API) to allocate the memory section of the volatile memory for persisting stored data across a warm boot of the system.

8. The system of claim 1 wherein the system is further programmed to enable the subscriber to allocate the first memory portion using an Application Specific Interface (API).

9. The system of claim 1 wherein the system is further programmed to enable the subscriber to allocate the second memory portion using an Application Specific Interface (API).

10. The system of claim 1 wherein after performing the warm reboot the system is programmed to initialize the memory management unit (MMU) to present the first memory portion and the second memory portion at the same virtual address as before the warm reboot.

11. The system of claim 1 wherein the system is further programmed to enable the subscriber to retrieve the data stored by the subscriber in the second memory portion using the reference information stored in the first memory portion in less than 10 msecs after the system initiates the warm boot.

12. The system of claim 1, wherein the system is further programmed to enable the subscriber to control the size of the allocation of the first memory portion using an Application Specific Interface (API).

13. The system of claim 1, wherein the system is further programmed to enable the subscriber to control the size of the allocation of the second memory portion using an Application Specific Interface (API).

14. The system of claim 1 wherein the processing element is a core cores of a multi-core processor.

15. The system of claim 1 wherein the subscriber is a process executed by the processing element.

16. The system of claim 1 wherein the subscriber is an operating system.

17. The system of claim 1 where the subscriber is a hypervisor.

18. A method comprising:

allocating, by a subscriber, a memory section of volatile memory for persisting stored data across a warm boot, the volatile memory associated with a processing element;

allocating, by the subscriber, a first memory portion and a second memory portion of the memory section for a subscriber;

storing, by the subscriber, a reference to the second memory portion in the first memory portion;

storing, by the subscriber, data in a second memory portion of the memory section; and

retrieving, by the subscriber, the stored data from the second memory portion using the reference stored in the first memory portion, after a warm boot of the system, wherein the warm boot causes an operating system to be restarted without cycling power to the processing element.

19. The method of claim 18 wherein the processing element is a single processor, a group of processors, a core of a multi-core processor, or a set of cores of a plurality of processors, wherein the set of cores comprises cores from one or more of the plurality of processors.

20. The method of claim 18 wherein the subscriber is an application, a process, or a thread executed by the processing element.

21. The method of claim 18 wherein the subscriber is an operating system, a hypervisor, or a device driver.

22. The method of claim 18 wherein the subscriber provides a size for the memory section that is to be allocated for the subscriber.

23. The method of claim 18 wherein the subscriber uses an Application Programmer Interface (API) to allocate the memory section of the volatile memory for persisting stored data across a warm boot of the system.