Patents by Inventor Neil Wilhelm

Neil Wilhelm 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: 5991831
    Abstract: The system described provides a reconfigurable serial interconnection among a processor, whether in a workstation or a server, and user class I/O devices, such as video display terminals, storage devices, and other peripherals. Sustainable I/O throughput of 1 Gbps or more supports the needs of display and video input devices. In addition the system allows hot plug-and-play of user class I/O devices.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: July 17, 1995
    Date of Patent: November 23, 1999
    Inventors: David D. Lee, Derek McAuley, Neil Wilhelm, J. Duane Northcutt
  • Patent number: 5956747
    Abstract: A processor is disclosed. The processor includes a processing unit with a plurality of pipelines. Each of the pipelines execute instructions which may define source register values and destination register values from a register file. A plurality of memories is also provided, each associated with one of the plurality of pipelines respectively. A coherency mechanism is provided to maintain coherency among the register values in the plurality of pipelines and their associated memories. In one embodiment, each memory associated with the plurality of pipelines is a register cache. Each register cache stores register values that were just used or will soon be needed by the instructions that have or will be executed on the pipeline associated with the register cache. A variety of coherency mechanisms may be used to transfer register values from register cache to register cache and maintain coherency among the register values in the plurality of register caches.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: April 17, 1997
    Date of Patent: September 21, 1999
    Assignee: Sun Microsystems, Inc.
    Inventors: Neil Wilhelm, Robert Yung
  • Patent number: 5761475
    Abstract: A processor is disclosed. The processor relates to a processor having a register file of registers and a dispatch unit capable of issuing up to (i) instructions of a program per cycle to an execution unit having (z) pipelines, wherein some of the instructions specify certain ones of the registers in the register file as source operands and designate certain ones of the registers in the register file as destination registers. The processor also includes a memory for storing the registers of the register file, the memory having (N) access ports configured to access up to (N) registers per cycle, where (N) is less than a maximum number of register values that may need to be accessed during a cycle.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: March 31, 1995
    Date of Patent: June 2, 1998
    Assignee: Sun Microsystems, Inc.
    Inventors: Robert Yung, Neil Wilhelm