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Autonomous initialization of non-volatile random access memory in a computer system

  • US 9,378,133 B2
  • Filed: 09/30/2011
  • Issued: 06/28/2016
  • Est. Priority Date: 09/30/2011
  • Status: Active Grant
First Claim
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1. An apparatus comprising:

  • a non-volatile random access memory (NVRAM) controller having a first interface to communicatively couple to a processor, the NVRAM controller having a second interface to communicatively couple to an NVRAM, the NVRAM being byte-rewritable and byte-erasable by the processor so that the NVRAM behaves as a system memory, the NVRAM to store thereon a memory interface table containing information for the NVRAM controller to autonomously initialize the NVRAM upon power-on of a computer system without interacting with the processor and firmware outside of the NVRAM, to thereby allow access to the NVRAM by the computer system, the memory interface table to contain a pointer to BIOS program code that is stored in the NVRAM, the apparatus further comprising a plurality of NVRAM controllers to manage the NVRAM, each of the NVRAM controllers to manage a respective portion of the NVRAM and wherein one of the NVRAM controllers is a boot agent to autonomously initialize the NVRAM, wherein the boot agent is to respond to a query from the computer system to identify itself as the boot agent.

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