JOHN G WILLIAMS
Medical Practice in Dublin, GA

2005021, Sep 29, 2005

Mar 27, 2004

10/811044

John Williams - Pleasanton CA, US
John Fingerhut - Campbell CA, US
Jonathan Rosen - Cary NC, US

CISCO TECHNOLOGY, INC., A CALIFORNIA CORPORATION - SAN JOSE CA

G06F017/30

707008000

Data is protected using locks, with the protected data sometimes being included in the locking messages, which may reduce overall processing latency, and/or reduce a bandwidth requirement for and/or number of storage operations accessing the native storage of the protected data. For example, the lock manager receives lock requests from each of the requesters, and selectively grants the lock requests. The protected data is typically communicated in the locking messages when the lock is highly contested, or at least two request for access to the data are pending. The lock manager initiates the sequence by indicating in a grant message to a requester to include the protected data in its release message. The lock manager then copies this data received in the release message to its grant message to the next requestor. If no other requesters are waiting, the grant message includes an indication not to send the protected data, and thus the requestor typically stores this protected data to storage so it can be accessed in the future.

2006027, Dec 7, 2006

Jun 7, 2005

11/147755

Earl Cohen - Fremont CA, US
James Markevitch - Palo Alto CA, US
Adrian Evans - Ottawa, CA
John Williams - Pleasanton CA, US

H04L 12/56

370413000

Meta-packets are used to more efficiently reassemble packets and to more efficiently conduct other packet processing operations. The meta-packets are special types of packets which are interpreted by hardware in a queuing system. Instead of directly containing data, the meta-packet packets contain instructions for building a desired packet from various identifiable storage locations in the packet processor system. Because the reassembled packet replaces the meta-packet, packet ordering is preserved. For example, assuming the meta-packet was in the proper place in a packet sequence, the packet (or packets) replacing the meta-packet will also be maintained in the same packet sequence order. Both meta-packets and conventional packets can be processed using the same queues and queuing system, and can be freely inter-mixed allowing co-existence of reassembled and full packets. The meta-packets provide packet re-assembly capability to full-packet systems and increase scalability for both full-packet or scatter-gather systems. The meta-packets can be used for conducting other packet processing operations either separately or in combination with packet re-assembly. For example, the meta-packets can be used to help manage packet queuing operations, provide timing references, and to initiate other packet processing operations and commands.

2006024, Oct 26, 2006

Apr 23, 2005

11/113248

John Williams - Pleasanton CA, US

CISCO TECHNOLOGY, INC. A CALIFORNIA CORPORATION - SAN JOSE CA

G06F 17/30

707003000

A hierarchical tree of deterministic finite automata (DFA) is traversed and/or generated based on a set of regular expressions. The hierarchical DFA includes a root DFA linked together with a set of leaf DFAs, and possibly a set of branch DFAs. The root DFA is always active and is responsive to an input string, as are any currently active branch and leaf DFAs. When a final state or arc is reached or traversed in any active DFA, a regular expression has been matched. The branch and leaf DFAs are activated in response to the root DFA or a branch DFA reaching or traversing an activation state or arc corresponding to the branch or leaf DFA. Active branch and leaf DFAs will become inactive when a termination state or arc is reached or traversed within the branch or leaf DFA. State explosion in the hierarchical DFA can typically be avoided by selectively grouping similar portions of the regular expressions together in branch and leaf DFAs.

2005022, Oct 6, 2005

Jul 16, 2004

10/892930

John Williams - Pleasanton CA, US
John Fingerhut - Aliso Viejo CA, US
Doron Shoham - Shoham, IL
Shimon Listman - Tel Mond, IL

CISCO TECHNOLOGY, INC. - SAN JOSE CA

H04L012/56

370394000

Sequences of items may be maintained using ordered locks. These items may correspond to anything, but using ordered locks to maintain sequences of packets, especially for maintaining requisite packet orderings when distributing packets to be processed to different packet processing engines, may be particularly useful. For example, in response to a particular packet processing engine completing processing of a particular packet, a gather instruction is attached to the particular identifier of a particular ordered lock associated with the particular packet. If no longer needed for further processing, the packet processing engine is immediately released to be able to process another packet or perform another function. The gather instruction is performed in response to the particular ordered lock being acquired by the particular identifier, with the gather instruction causing the processed particular packet to be sent.

2005010, May 12, 2005

Nov 12, 2003

10/706704

John Williams - Pleasanton CA, US
John Fingerhut - Campbell CA, US
Kenneth Potter - Raleigh NC, US

CISCO TECHNOLOGY, INC., A CALIFORNIA CORPORATION - SAN JOSE CA

H04L012/56

370394000

Sequences of items may be maintained using ordered locks. These items may correspond to anything, but using ordered locks to maintain sequences of packets may be particularly useful. One implementation uses a locking request, acceptance, and release protocol. One implementation associates instructions with locking requests such that when a lock is acquired, the locking mechanism executes or causes to be executed the associated instructions as an acceptance request of the lock is implied by the association of instructions (or may be explicitly requested). In some applications, the ordering of the entire sequence of packets is not required to be preserved, but rather only among certain sub-sequences of the entire sequence of items, which can be accomplished by converting an initial root ordered lock (maintaining the sequence of the entire stream of items) to various other locks (each maintaining a sequence of different sub-streams of items).

2006022, Oct 5, 2006

Apr 5, 2005

11/099094

Doron Shoham - Shoham, IL
Rami Zemach - Herzeliya, IL
Moshe Voloshin - Cupertino CA, US
Alon Ratinsky - Hadera, IL
Sarig Livne - Tel Aviv, IL
John Williams - Pleasanton CA, US

CISCO TECHNOLOGY, INC., A CALIFORNIA CORPORATION - SAN JOSE CA

H04L 12/26, H04L 1/00, G01R 31/08

370229000

Disclosed are, inter alia, methods, apparatus, data structures, computer-readable media, and mechanisms, for matching items with resources, such as, but not limited to packet processing contexts, output links, memory, storage, specialized hardware or software, compute cycles, or any other entity. One implementation includes means for maintaining distribution groups of items, means for maintaining differently aged resources queues, and means for matching resources identified as being at the head of the plurality of differently aged resources queues and as being primarily and secondarily associated with said distribution groups based on a set of predetermined criteria. For example, even though processing contexts can be shared among different distribution groups of packets, by giving preference to assigning recently used processing contexts for processing packets of a same distribution group, it is more likely that the processing instructions are already in the memory of this processing context, and therefore, processing will not be delayed until such instructions are retrieved into memory.

7551617, Jun 23, 2009

Feb 8, 2005

11/054076

Will Eatherton - San Jose CA, US
Earl T. Cohen - Fremont CA, US
John Andrew Fingerhut - Mission Viejo CA, US
Donald E. Steiss - Richardson TX, US
John Williams - Pleasanton CA, US

Cisco Technology, Inc. - San Jose CA

H04L 12/56

370392

A network processor has numerous novel features including a multi-threaded processor array, a multi-pass processing model, and Global Packet Memory (GPM) with hardware managed packet storage. These unique features allow the network processor to perform high-touch packet processing at high data rates. The packet processor can also be coded using a stack-based high-level programming language, such as C or C++. This allows quicker and higher quality porting of software features into the network processor. Processor performance also does not severely drop off when additional processing features are added. For example, packets can be more intelligently processed by assigning processing elements to different bounded duration arrival processing tasks and variable duration main processing tasks. A recirculation path moves packets between the different arrival and main processing tasks. Other novel hardware features include a hardware architecture that efficiently intermixes co-processor operations with multi-threaded processing operations and improved cache affinity.