THOMAS ALEXANDER
Pilots at Windy City Rd, Mulino, OR

2006020, Sep 14, 2006

Mar 10, 2006

11/373858

Thomas Alexander - Mulino OR, US
Marc Quattromani - Beaverton OR, US
Alexander Rekow - Portland OR, US

PMC-Sierra, Inc. - Santa Clara CA

G06F 13/28

710022000

A DMA engine, includes, in part, a DMA controller, an associative memory buffer, a request FIFO accepting data transfer requests from a programmable engine, such as a CPU, and a response FIFO that returns the completion status of the transfer requests to the CPU. Each request includes, in part, a target external memory address from which data is to be loaded or to which data is to be stored; a block size, specifying the amount of data to be transferred; and context information. The associative buffer holds data fetched from the external memory; and provides the data to the CPUs for processing. Loading into and storing from the associative buffer is done under the control of the DMA controller. When a request to fetch data from the external memory is processed, the DMA controller allocates a block within the associative buffer and loads the data into the allocated block.

6553029, Apr 22, 2003

Jul 9, 1999

09/351406

Thomas Alexander - Mulino OR

PMC-Sierra, Inc. - Burnaby

H04L 1228

370389, 370392

Data packets containing source and destination addresses are received on one or more incoming ports for distribution on one or more outgoing ports. An address look-up table stores previously processed source and destination addresses, together with source and destination contexts associated with the respective source and destination addresses. The contexts represent either a specific physical port, or an aggregated grouping of ports. A distribution table stores, for each aggregated grouping of outgoing ports, a corresponding aggregated group of identifiers of specific outgoing ports. As each packet is received, its source and destination addresses are extracted and the address look-up table is searched for those source and destination addresses. If the address look-up table contains those source and destination addresses then the source and destination contexts associated with those source and destination addresses are retrieved from the address look-up table. If the address look-up table does not contain a source address corresponding to the extracted source address, then a source context corresponding to the extracted source address is derived and stored in the address look-up table with the extracted source address.

6467006, Oct 15, 2002

Jul 9, 1999

09/350738

Thomas Alexander - Mulino OR
Matt Smith - Beaverton OR

PMC-Sierra, Inc. - Brunaby

G06F 1314

710240, 710105

Each one of a plurality of processors has a data storage register and a unique identifier. A message passing network interconnects the registers and processors. Each processor can store data in each register, but can read data only from its own register. “Master” priority is arbitratively allocated to one of the processors by repetitively, for each processor which has not previously been dismissed as a master candidate and until all but one processor is dismissed as a master candidate: storing a dismissal value in the processors register; selecting the next portion of the processors identifier; if the selected portion corresponds to a non-dismissal value, storing the non-dismissal value in all of the registers; if the selected portion corresponds to the dismissal value and if the non-dismissal value is stored in the processors register, dismissing the processor as a master candidate.

7539489, May 26, 2009

Apr 2, 2004

10/815823

Thomas Alexander - Mulino OR, US

Veriwave, Incorporated - Beaverton OR

H04Q 7/20

455423, 455 6711, 4554561, 455424, 455425, 370241

Apparatus and methods facilitating a distributed approach to performance and functionality testing of location-sensitive wireless data communication systems and equipment are described. A plurality of test units, geographically distributed at arbitrary points in a three-dimensional volume surround the system or equipment under test. Each test unit generates test stimuli and records responses from the device under test, and emulates the effects of changes in spatial location within an actual wireless network environment. A central controller co-ordinates the set of test units to ensure that they act as a logical whole, and enables testing to be performed in a repeatable manner in spite of the variations introduced by the location sensitive characteristics of wireless data communication networks. The central controller also maintains a user interface that provides a unified view of the complete test system, and a unified view of the behavior of the system or equipment under test. For diagnostic purposes, the recorded responses may be regenerated to view any defects as many times as necessary to correct them.

6131155, Oct 10, 2000

Jan 23, 1998

9/012568

Thomas Alexander - Mulino OR
Lester Noel Stott - Aloha OR

PMC Sierra Ltd. - BC

G06F 930

712207

A standard CPU (with a data cache) is modified in such a way as to permit the programmer to bypass the data cache when necessary in order to fetch or store data items directly from/to the memory, ensuring that data accesses exhibiting a high degree of locality are made to the cache, while those accesses that are non-local, or referencing shared data items, are made directly to the main memory, bypassing the cache. The fundamental observation is that in most situations the programmer of the CPU could very easily determine which data items could benefit from being placed into the data cache and which ones could not. This is especially true in embedded communications environments where the programmer has explicit control over data items that are shared between the program running on the CPU and the remainder of the hardware elements. The performance penalties incurred when the data cache is bypassed are obviated by means to allow the programmer to group accesses to these data items in such a way as to optimize references to main memory.

7672669, Mar 2, 2010

Jul 18, 2006

11/488396

Thomas Alexander - Mulino OR, US
L. Noel Stott - Aloha OR, US

VeriWave, Inc. - Beaverton OR

H04W 24/00

455423, 455 6711, 455425

Systems and methods enabling the efficient and repeatable simulation of mobility, during performance measurements of wireless data communications equipment are described. These are particularly useful for testing the impact on performance of spatial separation between Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) devices, clients, relative to their counterparts, access points. In accordance with one or more embodiments of the present invention, the controlled emulation of spatial distance effects by injecting impairments into the transmitted and received wireless data packet streams are disclosed to simulate the impact of distance on properties of signal level, signal to noise ratio, and frame error ratio. Injection of impairments may be accomplished by varying the transmit power, artificially inducing errors into transmitted frames, and withholding acknowledgements for otherwise valid received frames, at levels consonant with the amount of distance to be emulated. This enables various mobility performance measurements to be made on WLAN devices without actually requiring that they be physically separated.

7702330, Apr 20, 2010

Jul 31, 2006

11/461097

Thomas Alexander - Mulino OR, US
Eran Karoly - Oak Park CA, US
Sitarama Penumetsa - Beaverton OR, US

Veriwave Incorporated - Beaverton OR

H04Q 7/20

4554321, 455 6711, 455 6714, 370241

Apparatus and methods enabling the efficient and repeatable measurement of mobility performance of wireless data communications equipment are described. This is particularly useful for testing the impact of roaming of Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) devices, such as clients, between their counterparts, such as access points. The apparatus and methods include controlled emulation of roaming by WLAN devices, using a set of WLAN tester units, by activating and deactivating instances of emulated devices on different tester units to simulate the physical translation of the actual WLAN devices in an environment. Simulation of increasing and decreasing distance during the roaming process is also rendered possible. This enables various mobility performance measurements to be made on WLAN devices in a repeatable manner, free from artifacts due to device manufacturing tolerances.

6163539, Dec 19, 2000

Apr 28, 1998

9/066858

Thomas Alexander - Mulino OR
Bradley H. Smith - Saint Helens OR
Alexander D. Rekow - Portland OR

PMC-Sierra Ltd. - Burnaby

H04L 1256

370392

A datapath packet transmission controller which includes a central processing unit (CPU), a transmit FIFO buffer operative to receive and temporarily store data packets, and a disposition FIFO buffer coupled to said CPU for holding packet disposition commands received from said CPU. The CPU controls reception and storage of data packets in the transmit FIFO buffer, accesses data in data packets in the transmit FIFO buffer, provides disposition commands which control the disposition of packets after storage in the transmit FIFO buffer.

2003000, Jan 2, 2003

Mar 21, 2001

09/812821

Thomas Alexander - Mulino OR, US
David Wong - Vancouver, CA

H04L012/28, G06F015/16, H04J007/00

370/351000, 709/247000, 370/212000, 370/535000

The present invention relates to a merging network for multiple data streams comprising a pipelined butterfly network. The pipelined butterfly network comprises an input network for receiving a plurality of data streams of mutually constant widths, each data stream having logically related data bits carried on contiguous signal lines, a butterfly network containing suitably interconnected register and multiplexer means for rearranging the received data streams into a time-multiplexed constant-width output data stream, the output data stream having a width equal to or greater than the sum of the widths of the input data streams, and an output network for providing the output data stream interleaved to an output bus.

7636317, Dec 22, 2009

Nov 20, 2006

11/561833

L. Noel Stott - Aloha OR, US
Thomas Alexander - Mulino OR, US
Ryan McDonough - Beaverton OR, US

VeriWave, Inc. - Beaverton OR

H04L 12/26, G06F 13/14, G06F 9/455, H04W 24/06

370241, 370252, 702182, 703 21, 717134, 455423

Systems and methods are disclosed herein to provide communication testing for wireless or wired packet data communication devices, systems, and networks. In accordance with one embodiment of the present invention, a test system containing a multilevel scheduler is disclosed that includes cascaded schedulers, a software interface, and specific media protocol feedback to accurately emulate multiple clients on a network, with possibly numerous traffic flows per client. Such a test system may offer capabilities such as a more accurate emulation of client contention and collisions, a more accurate emulation of bandwidth sharing between clients, and a more accurate emulation of traffic flow multiplexing between flows.