Appeal No. 96-1919
Application 08/097,438
and the appellant's brief (Paper No. 11) and reply brief (Paper No. 13).
Appellant's Invention
Appellant discloses a system that counts the number of events received by the system to be
processed, and the number of events that have been processed by the system, and asserts and removes
an interrupt signal in response to the difference in the counts.
As shown in Fig. 9, a detector 114 detects data packets or events (DP) received from an
external bus 118, and generates an increment signal V in response to each detected event DP. An
INCR1
unprocessed event counter 116 maintains a count of the number of unprocessed events by (1)
incrementing an unprocessed count in response to each increment signal V , and (2) decrementing
INCR1
the unprocessed count by the value of a processed count each time a processed count word PCW is
received. The processed count word PCW, in turn, defines the value of the processed count.
Counter 116 also asserts an interrupt signal V when the unprocessed count indicates that
INT
events remain to be processed, and eliminates the interrupt signal V when the unprocessed count
INT
indicates that all of the events have been processed. A processor 120 processes the events detected
by detector 114, generates an increment signal V in response to the processing of each event, and
INCR2
generates a transmit signal V each time a number of events are processed. A counter 122 that counts
T
the number of processed events, transmits a count word PCW in response to each transmit signal VT,
and resets the count in response to the transmission of each count word PCW.
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