Intel Assigned Patent

Intel Corp., Santa Clara, CA, has been assigned a patent (8,255,594) developed by Debkumar De, Lakewood, WA, and Giri P. Mudusuru, Portland, OR, for "handling legacy BIOS services for mass storage devices using systems management interrupts with or without waiting for data transferred to mass storage devices."

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: "A method, system, and computer program product containing instructions for handling legacy BIOS services for mass storage devices using system management interrupts. In response to receiving a request for an input/output service, a system management interrupt is generated to enter system management mode. A system management RAM (SMRAM) is accessible to code executing inside system management mode. Sub-operations to perform the requested service are identified, and code is executed outside the SMRAM to perform a sub-operation to fulfill the request. The sub-operations identified for execution outside SMRAM include any sub-operations that require waiting for data to be transferred. Other code executing inside the SMRAM may perform additional sub-operations that do not require waiting for data transfers to fulfill the request. System management mode is exited before invoking the code to perform the sub-operation to execute outside the SMRAM."

The patent application was filed on Oct. 15, 2009 (12/587,908).