Patents by Inventor Frank A. Itkowsky, Jr.

Frank A. Itkowsky, Jr. 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).

  • Patent number: 5740467
    Abstract: An apparatus and method for transferring data in a data processing system to and from a host system. A communication adapter or input/output controller device is provided in which queues are utilized to transfer information between the adapter or controller and the host system. In order to minimize the amount of time a system or I/O bus or network is used during transfer of data between the adapter or controller and the host system, and reduce the amount of work that must be performed by the host system, the number of interrupts by the adapter or controller of the host system is limited to the minimum amount necessary by using an interrupt arm mechanism and by keeping track of completion indices stored in the host system.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: September 21, 1994
    Date of Patent: April 14, 1998
    Assignee: Digital Equipment Corporation
    Inventors: Stanley Chmielecki, Jr., Frank A. Itkowsky, Jr., G. Paul Koning, Douglas M. Washbaugh, Kadangode K. Ramakrishnan
  • Patent number: 5594927
    Abstract: An apparatus and method for transferring data via DMA in data processing system from a host system to a transmission network. The transferred data is in longword format in which each longword consists of four bytes. Within a longword, valid bytes intended for transmission are contiguous. The adapter or I/O device includes a packet memory and a FIFO circuit interposed between the host system and packet memory to allow for differences in access speed of a host memory and the packet memory. The FIFO circuit contains four discrete FIFO circuits that are separately addressable for writing the bytes of each longword received from the host memory for storage in the FIFO circuit. The received longword is applied to a barrel shifter which aligns the first valid byte in the received longword with the one of the four discrete FIFO circuits containing a first available storage location at a current FIFO longword address.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: September 15, 1994
    Date of Patent: January 14, 1997
    Assignee: Digital Equipment Corporation
    Inventors: Ching S. Lee, Frank A. Itkowsky, Jr.