Patent ID: 7962926

Claim:
A computing system, comprising: a processor including a user mode and a kernel mode; and a memory coupled to the processor, the memory storing a user mode device interface between the user mode and the kernel mode, the user mode device interface providing a socket communication path between a first process operating in the user mode and a second process operating in the kernel mode, the user mode device interface comprising a retry mechanism for generating a retry message when a thread in the second process is unavailable for processing a request to utilize the second process, wherein: the user mode device interface provides a set of shared functions to the first process and the second process, the retry mechanism is embedded in the set of shared functions in the user interface and runs on the first process in the user mode and on the second process in the kernel mode such that the retry mechanism is transparent to the first process, the retry mechanism introduces a set of special data packets that causes the second process to indicate an error condition and transmit a retry needed packet to the first process when the second process determines that a flee thread is not available, the retry needed packet causes the first process to wait for a predetermined period of time and to retry the request at a later time instead of implementing any error handling, the request is transmitted from the first process to the second process, the request is transmitted as a device open packet, and the device open packet and the retry message are transmitted between the first process and the second process via the socket communication path.