Wake on LAN power management

Abstract

A single integrated circuit includes logic that supports 10BASE-T, 100BASE-T and 1000BASE-T transceiver functionality. The invention implements power management techniques by placing unused functionality in sleep mode. When the functionality is required later, then that functionality may be awakened again and used as required for the particular situation. A processor is able to interact with the media access controller (MAC), and the MAC then communicates with the physical layer (PHY). The invention is adaptable to various devices that are capable to operating using 10BASE-T, 100BASE-T and 1000BASE-T, even those the PHY of these devices may be somewhat different.

Description

CROSS REFERENCE TO RELATED PATENTS / PATENT APPLICATIONS [0001] The present U.S. Utility Patent Application claims priority pursuant to 35 U.S.C. § 120, as a continuation, to the following U.S. Utility Patent Application which is hereby incorporated herein by reference in its entirety and made part of the present U.S. Utility Patent Application for all purposes: [0002] 1. U.S. Utility application Ser. No. 10 / 172,307, entitled “Method and apparatus for performing wake on LAN power management,” (Attorney Docket No. BP1517), filed Jun. 14, 2002, pending, which claims priority pursuant to 35 U.S.C. § 119(e) to the following U.S. Provisional Patent Application which is hereby incorporated herein by reference in its entirety and made part of the present U.S. Utility Patent Application for all purposes: [0003] 1. U.S. Provisional Application Ser. No. 60 / 346,099, entitled “Method and apparatus for performing wake on LAN power management,” (Attorney Docket No. BP1517P), filed Jan. 03, 2002.BAC...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

"The invention provides a way to manage and save power in a processor with a lot of functions. It does this by disengaging unnecessary functions and putting them in a sleep mode when not needed. When the processor needs to use certain functions, they are reengaged. This helps to conserve power and allows the processor to communicate with other devices while conserving power. The invention can be implemented in a single integrated circuit with multiple functions. The processor detects when certain parts of the circuit are not being used and signals to a higher-level processor to go into sleep mode. The processor then negotiates with other devices to determine the highest level of functionality that both systems can support. Overall, the invention helps to improve the efficiency and power management of processors."

Problems solved by technology

Unfortunately, power managements performed by BIOS and SMM operations are inherently problematic in computer networking applications because they have no knowledge regarding the busy or idle status of a managed device.

However, because the computer hardware managed by the operating system is typically proprietary, the operating system generally cannot perform power management for the hardware devices of all vendors.

These problems are particularly inherent in NICs whose back planes operate according to the PCI Local Bus Specification.

However, the PCI Local Bus Specification standard does not dictate how this power requirement is to be met by the various integrated circuits contained on the NIC.

As NICs include more integrated circuitry that is located in increasingly smaller surface areas, it becomes harder to meet the power requirement imposed by the PCI Local Bus Standard.

However, a hard limitation for placing multiple transceivers (or increased functionality) on a single integrated circuit relates to power consumption.

Since the PCI specification places an upper limit on the power that may be consumed by a compliant NIC, the limitations imposed thereby may limit the functionality that may be provided by a single NIC.

Images