Patent ID: 6633916
Filing Date: 2003-10-14
Classification: G06F

Abstract:
A computer system having a plurality of system resources including processors, memory and I/O circuitry, the computer system comprising:an interconnection mechanism for electrically interconnecting the processors, memory and I/O circuitry so that each processor has electrical access to all of the memory and at least some of the I/O circuitry; a software mechanism for dividing the system resources into a plurality of partitions; at least one operating system instance running in each of a plurality of the partitions; and a processor designation storage device that stores designations for each of a plurality of processors to define the association of each processor with one of said plurality of instances; wherein each of the sets for a given instance including a plurality of designations indicating whether a corresponding plurality of said processors has a particular operational status represented by that set, said operational statuses including: a potential status in which the processor are of a type compatible for operation with the given instance; a configure status which indicates whether the processors are under the control of the given instance; and an active status which indicates whether the processors are available for symmetric multiprocessing operation with the given instance.