Methods and systems that provide enhanced personal video recorder (“PVR”) and interactive television program guide (“IPG”) functionality are provided. An interactive television application (“application”) may be implemented to provide such functionality. The application may be used to display a list of PVR recordings, to schedule recordings to a PVR, to configure recordings, to view a list of scheduled recordings, to configure recording settings, or to select delete priority settings for recordings. The application may integrate pay-per-view and PVR functionality. The application may send user notifications for changes that are to be made to the recording content of a PVR. Live programming may be buffered by the application using a straight buffers that are created for each new program. Parallel buffers for concurrent programs may be implemented using multiple tuners. Straight buffers may be used in managing or controlling the flow of programming. Television content may be automatically paused when a user is engaged in using the application. Multiple IPGs for different users of a PVR may be implemented. Other PVR related features are also provided.

Systems and methods for interactive program guides with personal video recording features

A software analysis system for capturing tags generated by tag statements in instrumented source code. The system includes a probe that monitors the address and data bus of the target system. When a tag statement is executed in the target system, a tag is written to a predetermined location in the address space of the target. The tag contains a tag value that is indicative of the location in the source code of the tag statement generating the tag. The source code instrumenter includes a language-dependent parser and a language-independent analyzer that records tagging data in a symbol database. The system performs a variety of analysis functions in essentially real time, including code coverage, function and task execution times, memory allocation, call pairs, and program tracing.

Method and apparatus for analyzing software in a language-independent manner

Offloading specific processing tasks that would otherwise be performed in a computer system's processor and memory, to a peripheral device. The computing task is then performed by the peripheral, thereby saving computer system resources for other computing tasks. In one preferred embodiment, the disclosed method is utilized in a layered network model, wherein computing tasks that are typically performed in network applications are instead offloaded to the network interface card (NIC) peripheral.

Method and computer program product for offloading processing tasks from software to hardware

The present invention is directed to a method and computer program product for offloading specific processing tasks that would otherwise be performed in a computer system's processor and memory, to a peripheral device, or devices, that are connected to the computer. The computing task is then performed by the peripheral, thereby saving computer system resources for other computing tasks and increasing the overall computing efficiency of the computer system. In one preferred embodiment, the disclosed method is utilized in a layered network model, wherein computing tasks that are typically performed in network applications are instead offloaded to the network interface card (NIC) peripheral. An application executing on the computer system first queries the processing, or task offload capabilities of the NIC, and then selectively enables those capabilities that may be subsequently needed by the application. The specific processing capabilities of a NIC are made available by creating a task offload buffer data structure, which contains data indicative of the processing capabilities of the corresponding NIC. Once an application has discerned the capabilities of a particular NIC, it will selectively utilize any of the enabled task offload capabilities of the NIC by appending packet extension data to the network data packet that is forwarded to the NIC. The device driver of the NIC will review the data contained in the packet extension, and then cause the NIC to perform the specified operating task(s). This offloading of computing tasks on a per-packet basis allows an application to selectively offload tasks on a dynamic, as-needed basis. As such, applications executing on the computer system processor are able to offload tasks in instances where it is busy processing other computing tasks and processor overhead is high. Multiple tasks can also be offloaded in batches to a particular peripheral.

System for querying a peripheral device to determine its processing capabilities and then offloading specific processing tasks from a host to the peripheral device when needed

System for ascertaining task off-load capabilities of a device and enabling selected capabilities and when needed selectively and dynamically requesting the device to perform the task

Methods and associated apparatus for analyzing and presenting captured state logic data including memory accesses by an intelligent I/O interface device and an attached computer system. The data analysis and display of the present invention aids an engineer in locating data corruption failures in a system. The heuristic analysis of the methods of the present invention locate and identify buffers accessed within the captured state logic data and buffer descriptors accessed within the captured state logic data despite the time dispersion thereof. The buffers and buffer descriptors located and identified within the captured state logic data are displayed on a computer display screen in a manner to more effectively assist an engineer in locating a root cause of data corruption than was possible with prior methods devoid of the analysis of the present invention. In particular, the display visually identifies buffers regardless of the state/time dispersion in the original captured state logic data and distinguishes read access from write access thereto. The display includes indicia used to associate a located and identified buffer descriptor with the identified buffer to which it refers. In response to user requests, the data contained in a selected buffer or selected buffers may be textually displayed either in a raw form or in accordance with the protocol specifications of the underlying data exchange application being debugged. The identified buffers may also be easily searched for a user specified string without concern for the time dispersion of the buffers in the captured state logic data.

William M Zevin

Papers

Method and apparatus for correlating logic analyzer state capture data with associated application data structures

Verfahren und Vorrichtung zum Korrelieren von Logikanalysatorzustandserfassungsdaten mit zugeordneten Anwendungsdatenstrukturen