Claims
- 1. A asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) network station in an ATM network comprising:
- a host, the host having a central processing unit (CPU) connected to a host memory, a bridge, and a system input/output (I/O) bus;
- an adapter, the adapter connected to the host via a system bus, the adapter having a direct memory access (DMA) engine, a transmit packet memory, a control logic having a status DMA engine, and a link interface;
- means, in the host memory, for maintaining status information of a plurality of interrupts through the use of a plurality of memory cycles and without the intervention of the CPU; and
- a communication line from the link interface to the ATM network, wherein the means for maintaining status information comprises:
- a status block in the host memory;
- a status DNA engine (SDE) in the adapter;
- a plurality of host.sub.-- consumer indices, in the SDE, corresponding to a plurality of queues in the host memory, each one of the host.sub.-- consumer indices representing a value of a consumer index of one of said queues which was last written to the host by the adapter via DMA;
- a plurality of adapter.sub.-- consumer indices, in the SDE, corresponding to the plurality of queues in the host memory, each one of the adapter.sub.-- consumer indices representing a copy of a consumer of one of said plurality of queues in host memory;
- means, in response to a status block update in the status block, for updating a plurality of values in the adapter.sub.-- consumer indices; and
- means for copying the values of the adapter.sub.-- consumer indices to consumers.sub.-- indices.
- 2. The asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) network station in an ATM network according to claim 1 wherein the means for updating comprises:
- means, in response to one of the adapter.sub.-- consumer indices being incremented, for setting a plurality of consumer.sub.-- bit modified indices in the SDE; and
- means for generating a status block update.
- 3. The asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) network station in an ATM network according to claim 2 wherein the means for generating the status block update comprises an interrupt in response to one of a plurality of completion indices not equaling a corresponding one of the host.sub.-- consumer indices.
- 4. A method of updating a status information block in a memory of an ATM network station comprising the steps of:
- providing a host, the host having the memory, the memory having a plurality of queues;
- providing an adapter, the adapter having a DMA engine and a logic having a status DMA engine register;
- providing a system bus for connection of the adapter to the host;
- providing the status DMA engine register with a consumer index;
- maintaining a plurality of host.sub.-- consumer indices and adapter consumer.sub.-- indices corresponding to each one of the plurality of queues; and generating a status block update when one of the adapter.sub.-- consumer indices does not equal one of a corresponding host.sub.-- consumer index for one of the queues, said step of generating a status block update including the steps of:
- generating a status block update request whenever one of the adapter consumer indices for one of the corresponding queues is incremented;
- generating an interrupt on completion; and
- clearing the interrupt if the value of a completion index of one of the plurality of queues is equal to the value of a corresponding host.sub.-- consumer index.
Parent Case Info
This application is a continuation of application Ser. No. 08/365,632, filed Dec. 28, 1994, now abandoned.
US Referenced Citations (8)
Continuations (1)
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Number |
Date |
Country |
Parent |
365632 |
Dec 1994 |
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