NFA COMPLETION NOTIFICATION
First Claim
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1. A method comprising:
- (a) a processor communicates a first command across a bus to an NFA (Non-deterministic Finite Automaton) engine, the first command is an instruction to the NFA engine to perform an NFA operation;
(b) the processor communicates a second command across the bus to the NFA engine, the second command is an instruction to the NFA engine to return a reference value to the processor;
(c) in response to the first command the NFA engine performs the NFA operation thereby generating a result and storing the result in a memory; and
(d) in response to the second command the NFA engine causes the reference value to be transferred across the bus to the processor.
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Abstract
An automaton hardware engine employs a transition table organized into 2n rows, where each row comprises a plurality of n-bit storage locations, and where each storage location can store at most one n-bit entry value. Each row corresponds to an automaton state. In one example, at least two NFAs are encoded into the table. The first NFA is indexed into the rows of the transition table in a first way, and the second NFA is indexed in to the rows of the transition table in a second way. Due to this indexing, all rows are usable to store entry values that point to other rows.
27 Citations
21 Claims
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1. A method comprising:
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(a) a processor communicates a first command across a bus to an NFA (Non-deterministic Finite Automaton) engine, the first command is an instruction to the NFA engine to perform an NFA operation; (b) the processor communicates a second command across the bus to the NFA engine, the second command is an instruction to the NFA engine to return a reference value to the processor; (c) in response to the first command the NFA engine performs the NFA operation thereby generating a result and storing the result in a memory; and (d) in response to the second command the NFA engine causes the reference value to be transferred across the bus to the processor. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9)
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10. An apparatus comprising:
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a plurality of processors that can supply NFA commands to an NFA engine, wherein one of the processors is a commanding processor that supplies an NFA command to the NFA engine; an NFA pipeline that performs an NFA operation indicated by the NFA command; and means for notifying the commanding processor that the NFA command has been completed without notifying any of the other processors of the plurality of processors. - View Dependent Claims (11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17)
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18. A method comprising:
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(a) communicating an NFA (Non-deterministic Finite Automaton) command from a processor across a bus and into a command FIFO (First In First Out) memory of an NFA engine, wherein the command includes a reference value; and (b) communicating the reference value from the NFA engine across the bus to the processor. - View Dependent Claims (19, 20, 21)
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Specification