Granted Patent B1

US 7,886,175 · App. 12/042,558 · Granted Feb 8, 2011

Abstract

Claims (66)

1. A device comprising:

a processor to:

execute a thread;

execute a plurality of wrappers that are called from within the thread to invoke a plurality of one-shot signal objects to generate delayed signals, each of the plurality of wrappers configured to:

detect whether different ones of one-shot signal objects that were invoked from within the thread have generated signals at periodic time intervals,

determine a delay to be used for invoking one of the plurality of one-shot signal objects,

invoke the one of the plurality of one-shot signal object to generate one of the delayed signals based on the delay when the different ones of one-shot signal objects have generated signals at periodic time intervals; and

receive the delayed signals generated from the plurality of one-shot signal objects over a time period.

2. The device of claim 1 , where the device includes a router, a switch, or a server device.

3. The device of claim 1 , where the wrapper is further configured to:

receive a reference to a delay object used to determine the delay.

4. The device of claim 3 , where the delay object includes is configured to determine the delay based on:

a uniform probability distribution function; or

a Gaussian probability distribution function.

5. The device of claim 1 , where the processor is further configured to:

use callback objects to respond to the received delayed signals.

6. The device of claim 1 , where the wrapper is further configured to:

access a signal information object that is used to detect whether the different ones of one-shot signal objects have generated signals at periodic time intervals, the signal information object including information about the signals.

7. The device of claim 6 , where the signal information object further includes at least one of:

a state context;

an identifier of a thread in which the one of the plurality of one-shot signal object generates the one of the delays signals;

an identifier of a thread that includes a callback object;

a thread identifier used to identify the signal information object; or

an effective instruction pointer register value used to uniquely identify the signal information object.

8. The device of claim 6 , where the wrapper is further configured to:

detect if the device suffers from a processing overload based on information in the signal information object.

9. The device of claim 8 , where the wrapper is further configured to:

withhold invoking the one of the plurality of one-shot signal objects when the device suffers from the processing overload.

10. The device of claim 1 , where one or more of the one-shot signal objects includes:

a one-shot timer; or

an event generator.

11. The device of claim 1 , where the wrapper is further configured to:

receive a length of time for the one of the plurality of one-shot signal objects to wait before generating the one of the delayed signals.

12. The device of claim 1 , where the delayed signals include at least one of:

a software signal;

an event object; or

a network message.

13. The device of claim 1 , where the one of the plurality of one-shot signal objects includes:

a component for sending a keep-alive response to the device when the one of the plurality of one-shot signal objects is invoked.

14. A computer-readable memory, comprising:

computer-executable instructions for invoking a plurality of one-shot signal objects, the instructions for invoking the plurality of one-shot signal objects including:

instructions for detecting whether signals are periodically sent from different one-shot signal objects;

instructions for generating a delay when the signals are periodically being sent from the different one-shot signal objects;

instructions for determining a time at which one of the plurality of one-shot signal objects is to generate a signal based on the delay;

instructions for calling the one of the plurality of one-shot signal objects and conveying the time at which the one of the plurality of one-shot signal objects is to generate the signal; and

instructions for receiving the signal that is sent from the one of the plurality of one-shot signal objects in response to being called.

15. The computer-readable memory of claim 14 , where the one-shot signal object includes:

an object hosted on a virtual device or a remote network device.

16. The computer-readable memory of claim 14 , where the instructions for detecting whether signals are periodically being sent include:

instructions for measuring a distance between local maxima of a function that maps time to numbers of signals that are generated from the different one-shot signal objects, the function derived from statistics that are collected about the signals.

17. The computer-readable memory of claim 16 , further comprising:

instructions for dynamically allocating memory for storing the statistics.

18. The computer-readable memory of claim 14 , where the instructions for detecting whether signals are periodically being sent include:

instructions for recording statistics related to the one-shot signal object; and

instructions for using the statistics to determine whether the signals are periodically sent from different one-shot signal objects.

19. The computer-readable memory of claim 14 , further comprising:

instructions for conveying to the one of the plurality of one-shot signal objects a reference to a callback object that responds to the signal.

20. A device comprising:

means for allocating memory for a signal information object;

means for recording information related to signals that are generated from one-shot signal objects in the signal information object;

means for deciding whether the signals are periodically overloading the device based on the recorded information;

means for determining a delay when the device is overloaded by the signals;

means for providing the determined delay to a one-shot signal object;

means for calling the one-shot signal object;

means for receiving a signal from the one-shot signal object in response to the call; and

means for responding to the signal from the one-shot signal object.

Assignments (16)