Claims
- 1. A method of processing interrupts in a computer system comprising:creating entries in a system database for sources capable of generating interrupts, wherein said entries are in the form of objects; organizing said objects in the form of an Interrupt Source Tree (IST), wherein each object in said IST comprises an Interrupt Source Entry (ISE); identifying the source in the system database that generated an interrupt when said interrupt occurs; and processing said interrupt.
- 2. The method of claim 1 wherein said interrupt comprises:a first-level realtime native interrupt controlled by a microkernel; a second-level deferred native interrupt controlled by the microkernel; and a third-level deferred non-native interrupt Java Virtual Machine (JVM).
- 3. The method of claim 1, wherein said objects comprise references to at least one component of interrupt processing code, said at least one component comprising:an interrupt handler; an interrupt enabler; an interrupt disabler; and an interrupt acknowledger.
- 4. The method of claim 3, wherein processing said interrupt further comprises:responding to said interrupt generated from said source by causing a single interrupt dispatcher to execute; identifying said source to said interrupt dispatcher; and processing said interrupt generated by said source with said interrupt handler corresponding to said source.
- 5. The method of claim 4 wherein said interrupt dispatcher invokes said interrupt handler.
- 6. The method of claim 4 wherein said source is a device, said method of identifying said source comprises:decoding said interrupt via a bus interrupt handler; locating the child device via said bus interrupt handler; and calling said interrupt handler associated with said child device designated by said bus interrupt handler.
- 7. The method of claim 3, further comprising synchronizing all three levels of interrupt, said synchronizing comprising:acquiring a monitor associated with said Interrupt Source Entry before executing said interrupt handler, wherein said interrupt handler will only execute with said monitor; and deferring work from a lower interrupt level to a higher interrupt level, wherein said deferring comprises: noting said interrupt source object being deferred; and notifying said interrupt source object when said monitor becomes available, thereby causing the virtual machine to wake-up threads waiting to execute.
- 8. A system for processing interrupts in a computer comprising:a processor; a memory unit coupled to said processor and comprising software configured to process interrupts; at least one interrupt source having drivers store in said memory unit; an interrupt dispatcher for responding to interrupts from said interrupt source, said memory unit containing a system database comprising: a device namespace, wherein said device namespace contains entries in the form of objects for said processor, and said at least one interrupt source; and an interrupt namespace containing an entry for each of said at least one interrupt source, wherein said entry is in the form of an object.
- 9. The system of claim 8 wherein said software is logically arranged into a platform independent layer and a platform dependent layer, said platform independent layer comprises:an application program layer for user operations; and a runtime layer comprising a virtual machine and device interfaces, wherein said device interfaces support operations of said at least one interrupt source.
- 10. The system of claim 9 wherein said platform dependent layer comprises:a platform interface layer comprising a virtual machine system handler; interrupt classes; Direct Memory Access (DMA) classes; memory classes; and Bus managers; an Operating System Native Methods layer comprising interrupt, DMA, and method native methods; a microkernel layer supporting low level hardware functions; and a boot interface layer for loading and initializing said software at power up.
- 11. The system of claim 8 wherein objects of said interrupt namespace are organized in the form of an Interrupt Source Tree (IST), wherein each object is an Interrupt Source Entry (ISE).
- 12. The system of claim 8 wherein each entry in the device namespace is cross-referenced with an entry in the interrupt namespace.
- 13. A computer program product comprising:a computer readable medium having computer program code embodied therein for processing interrupts, said computer program code configured to: create entries in a system database for sources capable of generating interrupts, wherein said entries are in the form of objects; and organize said objects in the form of an Interrupt Source Tree (IST), wherein each object in said IST is an Interrupt Source Entry (ISE); and cause a processor to decode interrupts; determine the source of said interrupts; and process said interrupts.
- 14. The computer program product of claim 13, wherein said objects comprises references to at least one component of interrupt processing code, said at least one component comprising:an interrupt handler; an interrupt enabler; an interrupt disabler; and an interrupt acknowledger.
- 15. The computer program product of claim 14, further comprising computer program code configured to cause a processor to:respond to an interrupt generated by said source by causing an interrupt dispatcher to execute; identify said source to said interrupt dispatcher; and process said interrupt generated by said source using said interrupt handler corresponding to said source.
- 16. The computer program product of claim 15, wherein said interrupt handler is invoked by interrupt dispatcher.
- 17. The computer program product of claim 15, wherein said code configured to cause to computer to identify said source comprises computer program code configured to cause a processor to:decode said interrupt by a bus interrupt handler; locate the child device by said bus interrupt handler; and call said interrupt handler associated with said child device designated by said bus interrupt handler.
Parent Case Info
This is a continuation of application Ser. No 09/047,938 filed Mar. 26, 1998, now U.S. Pat. No. 6,052,739.
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Continuations (1)
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Number |
Date |
Country |
Parent |
09/047938 |
Mar 1998 |
US |
Child |
09/536237 |
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US |