Patents by Inventor Alfred W. Shannon

Alfred W. Shannon has filed for patents to protect the following inventions. This listing includes patent applications that are pending as well as patents that have already been granted by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO).

  • Initializing programs having dependencies
    Patent number: 5555411
    Abstract: Method and means are described which provide a way for an application program to be generated to include dependent control blocks which indicate which support programs must be initialized in the run-time support environment prior to the application program's initialization and which must be terminated after its termination. Since support programs may be dependent on each other, a topological sort is performed to determine an order in which the support programs can be initialized so that no routine is initialized before all of its prerequisites are initialized. The initialization order is saved, so that following the execution of the program, termination can be performed in the reverse order.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: March 31, 1995
    Date of Patent: September 10, 1996
    Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
    Inventors: Laurence E. England, Andrew J. Lang, Alfred W. Shannon
  • Initializing programs having dependencies
    Patent number: 5428780
    Abstract: Method and means are described which provide a way for an application program to be generated to include dependent control blocks which indicate which support programs must be initialized in the run-time support environment prior to the application program's initialization and which must be terminated after its termination. Since support programs may be dependent on each other, a topological sort is performed to determine an order in which the support programs can be initialized so that no routine is initialized before all of its prerequisites are initialized. The initialization order is saved, so that following the execution of the program, termination can be performed in the reverse order.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: June 18, 1993
    Date of Patent: June 27, 1995
    Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
    Inventors: Laurence E. England, Andrew J. Lang, Alfred W. Shannon
  • System for inserting constructs into compiled code, defining scoping of common blocks and dynamically binding common blocks to tasks
    Patent number: 5093916
    Abstract: A method performed within a multi-processing, multi-programming computer environment for reducing conflict among tasks concurrently accessing COMMON BLOCKs in code sequences compiled within said environment from a FORTRAN like language system, and for reducing the memory used in the storing of private copies of said COMMON BLOCKs. The method involves inserting constructs at compile time into the compiled code which enable the COMMON BLOCKs to be dynamically bound at runtime to two or more referencing tasks. Then, at execution time responsive to the constructs, the blocks are bound to the tasks dynamically and scoped so that they lie within the dynamic nesting of the tasks.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: May 20, 1988
    Date of Patent: March 3, 1992
    Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
    Inventors: Alan H. Karp, Randolph G. Scarborough, Alfred W. Shannon, Jin-Fan Shaw, Leslie J. Toomey