Patents by Inventor Todd Alan Venton
Todd Alan Venton 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).
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Patent number: 8296739Abstract: Techniques are provided for determining consequences of an injected fault on a system running a given application program or operating system, in order to measure the software impact of a hardware soft error on the application program/operating system. The application program software is emulated instruction-by-instruction, where source operands are randomly modified before an instruction is executed, and destination operands are randomly modified after an instruction is executed, in order to mimic hardware soft errors. In addition, a program counter is randomly modified after execution of a branch instruction. The resulting consequences of such modifications are monitored such that a fault of an instruction being executed is modeled in order to determine a soft error rate (SER) for a software application program or operating system.Type: GrantFiled: March 31, 2008Date of Patent: October 23, 2012Assignee: International Business Machines CorporationInventors: Ronald Nick Kalla, Jeffrey William Kellington, Naoko Pia Sanda, Todd Alan Venton
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Patent number: 8108655Abstract: Issue logic identifies a simple fixed point instruction, included in a unified payload, which is ready to issue. The simple fixed point instruction is a type of instruction that is executable by both a fixed point execution unit and a load-store execution unit. In turn, the issue logic determines that the unified payload does not include a load-store instruction that is ready to issue. As a result, the issue logic issues the simple fixed point instruction to the load-store execution unit in response to determining that the simple fixed point instruction is ready to issue and determining that the unified payload does not include a load-store instruction that is ready to issue.Type: GrantFiled: March 24, 2009Date of Patent: January 31, 2012Assignee: International Business Machines CorporationInventors: Christopher Michael Abernathy, James Wilson Bishop, Mary Douglass Brown, William Elton Burky, Robert Allen Cordes, Hung Qui Le, Dung Quoc Nguyen, Todd Alan Venton
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Patent number: 8103852Abstract: An information handling system includes a processor with a bifurcated unified issue queue that may perform unified issue queue VSU store instruction dependency operations. The bifurcated unified issue queue BUIQ maintains VSU store instructions in the form of internal operations data. The BUIQ includes a unified issue queue UIQ 0 and a unified issue queue UIQ 1. The BUIQ may manage a particular VSU store instruction from one UIQ to determine data dependencies and employ the other UIQ to determine address dependencies of that particular VSU store instruction. The UIQs employ a dependency matrix including a dependency array. The dependency array data maintains both data and address dependency information. The particular VSU store instruction issues to execution units such as VSUs for data dependency information and load store units (LSUs) for address dependency information. A particular VSU store instruction may execute to provide data dependency information independent of address dependency information.Type: GrantFiled: December 22, 2008Date of Patent: January 24, 2012Assignee: International Business Machines CorporationInventors: James Wilson Bishop, Mary Douglass Brown, William Elton Burky, Todd Alan Venton
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Patent number: 8020072Abstract: The illustrative embodiments provide a computer implemented method and an apparatus for correcting data errors. An error correction unit receives data from a register. Responsive to receiving the data from the register, the error correction unit determines whether an error is present in the data. Responsive to identifying the error in the data, the error correction unit corrects the data to form corrected data. Responsive to correcting the error in the data, the error correction unit notifies a counter in the register to update.Type: GrantFiled: October 25, 2006Date of Patent: September 13, 2011Assignee: International Business Machines CorporationInventors: Christopher Michael Abernathy, Todd Alan Venton
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Patent number: 7823028Abstract: An apparatus and computer instructions for interfacing with an operating system on a data processing system. Registers in a processor are allocated for use in providing a low-level console interface to a remote data processing system, wherein the registers are accessed by the remote data processing system using the low-level console interface. Data is exchanged with the remote data processing system through the low-level console interface. Also, multiple channels may be multiplexed through this low-level console interface.Type: GrantFiled: January 4, 2008Date of Patent: October 26, 2010Assignee: International Business Machines CorporationInventors: Anton Blanchard, Milton Devon Miller, II, Todd Alan Venton
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Publication number: 20100250901Abstract: Issue logic identifies a simple fixed point instruction, included in a unified payload, which is ready to issue. The simple fixed point instruction is a type of instruction that is executable by both a fixed point execution unit and a load-store execution unit. In turn, the issue logic determines that the unified payload does not include a load-store instruction that is ready to issue. As a result, the issue logic issues the simple fixed point instruction to the load-store execution unit in response to determining that the simple fixed point instruction is ready to issue and determining that the unified payload does not include a load-store instruction that is ready to issue.Type: ApplicationFiled: March 24, 2009Publication date: September 30, 2010Applicant: International Business Machines CorporationInventors: Christopher Michael Abernathy, James Wilson Bishop, Mary Douglass Brown, William Elton Burky, Robert Allen Cordes, Hung Qui Le, Dung Quoc Nguyen, Todd Alan Venton
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Patent number: 7805636Abstract: A data processing system and computer program product for analyzing data from a crash of the data processing system. A portion of the memory in the data processing system is preserved in response to the crash of the data processing system. The data processing system is rebooted with an environment suited for analyzing trace data in the portion of the memory.Type: GrantFiled: January 2, 2008Date of Patent: September 28, 2010Assignee: International Business Machines CorporationInventors: Anton Blanchard, Milton Devon Miller, II, Todd Alan Venton
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Publication number: 20100161942Abstract: An information handling system includes a processor with a bifurcated unified issue queue that may perform unified issue queue VSU store instruction dependency operations. The bifurcated unified issue queue BUIQ maintains VSU store instructions in the form of internal operations data. The BUIQ includes a unified issue queue UIQ 0 and a unified issue queue UIQ 1. The BUIQ may manage a particular VSU store instruction from one UIQ to determine data dependencies and employ the other UIQ to determine address dependencies of that particular VSU store instruction. The UIQs employ a dependency matrix including a dependency array. The dependency array data maintains both data and address dependency information. The particular VSU store instruction issues to execution units such as VSUs for data dependency information and load store units (LSUs) for address dependency information. A particular VSU store instruction may execute to provide data dependency information independent of address dependency information.Type: ApplicationFiled: December 22, 2008Publication date: June 24, 2010Applicants: International Business Machines Corporation, IBM CorporationInventors: James Wilson Bishop, Mary Douglass Brown, William Elton Burky, Todd Alan Venton
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Publication number: 20090249301Abstract: Techniques are provided for determining consequences of an injected fault on a system running a given application program or operating system, in order to measure the software impact of a hardware soft error on the application program/operating system. The application program software is emulated instruction-by-instruction, where source operands are randomly modified before an instruction is executed, and destination operands are randomly modified after an instruction is executed, in order to mimic hardware soft errors. In addition, a program counter is randomly modified after execution of a branch instruction. The resulting consequences of such modifications are monitored such that a fault of an instruction being executed is modeled in order to determine a soft error rate (SER) for a software application program or operating system.Type: ApplicationFiled: March 31, 2008Publication date: October 1, 2009Applicant: INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS MACHINES CORPORATIONInventors: Ronald Nick Kalla, Jeffrey William Kellington, Naoko Pia Sanda, Todd Alan Venton
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Patent number: 7536539Abstract: A method, apparatus and computer instructions for discovering hardware nodes having a hierarchical organization. A subset of the hardware nodes in the data processing system is initialized prior to loading an operating system supporting parallel threads. In response to loading the operating system, thread for each hardware node discovered below a known hardware node is created to form a set of threads.Type: GrantFiled: August 5, 2004Date of Patent: May 19, 2009Assignee: International Business Machines CorporationInventors: Anton Blanchard, Milton Devon Miller, II, Todd Alan Venton
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Publication number: 20080172453Abstract: An apparatus and computer instructions for interfacing with an operating system on a data processing system. Registers in a processor are allocated for use in providing a low-level console interface to a remote data processing system, wherein the registers are accessed by the remote data processing system using the low-level console interface. Data is exchanged with the remote data processing system through the low-level console interface. Also, multiple channels may be multiplexed through this low-level console interface.Type: ApplicationFiled: January 4, 2008Publication date: July 17, 2008Inventors: ANTON BLANCHARD, Milton Devon Milller, Todd Alan Venton
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Patent number: 7401262Abstract: A method, apparatus and computer instructions for interfacing with an operating system on a data processing system. Registers in a processor are allocated for use in providing a low-level console interface to a remote data processing system, wherein the registers are accessed by the remote data processing system using the low-level console interface. Data is exchanged with the remote data processing system through the low-level console interface. Also, multiple channels may be multiplexed through this low-level console interface.Type: GrantFiled: August 5, 2004Date of Patent: July 15, 2008Assignee: International Business Machines CorporationInventors: Anton Blanchard, Milton Devon Miller, II, Todd Alan Venton
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Publication number: 20080109687Abstract: The illustrative embodiments provide a computer implemented method and an apparatus for correcting data errors. An error correction unit receives data from a register. Responsive to receiving the data from the register, the error correction unit determines whether an error is present in the data. Responsive to identifying the error in the data, the error correction unit corrects the data to form corrected data. Responsive to correcting the error in the data, the error correction unit notifies a counter in the register to update.Type: ApplicationFiled: October 25, 2006Publication date: May 8, 2008Inventors: Christopher Michael Abernathy, Todd Alan Venton
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Patent number: 7346809Abstract: A method, apparatus, and computer instructions for analyzing data from a crash of the data processing system. A portion of the memory in the data processing system is preserved in response to the crash of the data processing system. The data processing system is rebooted with an environment suited for analyzing trace data in the portion of the memory.Type: GrantFiled: August 5, 2004Date of Patent: March 18, 2008Assignee: International Business Machines CorporationInventors: Anton Blanchard, Milton Devon Miller, II, Todd Alan Venton
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Patent number: 7272759Abstract: A method, apparatus, and computer instructions for monitoring a device in a data processing system. A register associated with the device is accessed from a reduced function processor core through a connection between the register for the device and the reduced function processor core. The device is monitored using the value of the register.Type: GrantFiled: August 5, 2004Date of Patent: September 18, 2007Assignee: International Business Machines CorporationInventors: Anton Blanchard, Milton Devon Miller, II, Todd Alan Venton