Abstract: A communication system for transmitting a signal through a channel medium comprising digitizing the signal, time-reversing the digitized signal, and transmitting the signal through the channel medium. In one embodiment a transmitter is adapted to transmit the signal, a multiplicity of receivers are adapted to receive the signal, a digitizer digitizes the signal, and a time-reversal signal processor is adapted to time-reverse the digitized signal. An embodiment of the present invention includes multi bit implementations. Another embodiment of the present invention includes 1-bit implementations. Another embodiment of the present invention includes a multiplicity of receivers used in the step of transmitting the signal through the channel medium.

Abstract: Information, such as instructions and operands, is prefetched in advance of a processor needing the information. In one embodiment, a prefetch unit receives the same instruction stream as the processor. The prefetch unit is run at a faster clock speed than the processor allowing the prefetch unit to run ahead of the processor in the instruction stream and to prefetch information in advance of the processor needing the information. In one embodiment, the prefetch unit requests instructions and operands from a first level (L1) cache. The L1 cache sends the requested instructions and operands to the prefetch unit and automatically stores the requested instructions and operands until needed by the processor. By prefetching information, the prefetch unit improves processor performance by reducing the number of cache misses and by reducing memory latency.

Abstract: A protocol processor is a specialized processor dedicated to extracting data (i.e., a payload) from an incoming communication (e.g., packet) and configuring outgoing data for transmission, and includes one or more protocol processing elements (PPE). Each PPE may be programmed to handle any set of communication protocols, and includes a set of large registers (e.g., 128 bytes, 256 bytes). A PPE also includes a parse unit for parsing packets to retrieve certain information and a lookup unit for accessing a control block indicating how to process an incoming packet or outgoing payload. A modification unit removes headers from incoming packets and/or adds them to outgoing data. A timer unit manages a large number of timers (e.g., for different communication streams). A control block cache may store recently accessed control blocks, and a data streaming unit streams packets (or packet portions) into and out of the registers.

Abstract: A system that facilitates control over a group of devices coupled to a network. This system allows an operator to specify a policy for controlling a group of devices. This policy is automatically translated into lower-level device-specific commands, which are sent to the devices across the network. The system additionally provides a mechanism for continuous monitoring and control of the devices. Thus, one embodiment of the present invention provides a system for controlling devices on a network. This system operates by receiving a request to define a policy for controlling the devices. In response to the request, the system creates a policy object specifying actions of the devices to implement the policy, and stores the policy object in a memory. Next, the system associates the policy object with devices from the network, and controls these associated devices automatically according to actions specified in the policy object.