Aspects include accessing data located on peripheral devices using synchronous input/output (I/O). A unit of work is received by an operating system (OS) executing on a processor. The unit of work includes an I/O request to access data located on a persistent storage control unit (SCU) that is external to the processor. It is determined that the I/O request should be serviced by a synchronous I/O. A synchronous I/O is initiated to the persistent SCU to service the I/O request based on determining that the I/O request should be serviced by a synchronous I/O. The unit of work is kept active while waiting for the synchronous I/O to complete. A notification that the I/O has completed is received and the unit of work is completed in response to receiving the notification.

Aspects include accessing data located on peripheral devices using synchronous input/output (I/O). A unit of work is received by an operating system (OS) executing on a processor. The unit of work includes an I/O request to access data located on a persistent storage control unit (SCU) that is external to the processor. It is determined that the I/O request should be serviced by a synchronous I/O. A synchronous I/O is initiated to the persistent SCU to service the I/O request based on determining that the I/O request should be serviced by a synchronous I/O. The unit of work is kept active while waiting for the synchronous I/O to complete. A notification that the I/O has completed is received and the unit of work is completed in response to receiving the notification.

An electronic device is described. The electronic device includes a memory. The electronic device also includes a very long instruction word (VLIW) circuit. The VLIW circuit includes an asynchronous memory controller. The asynchronous memory controller is configured to asynchronously access the memory to render different levels of detail. The electronic device may include a non-uniform frame buffer controller configured to dynamically access different subsets of a frame buffer. The different subsets may correspond to the different levels of detail.

When a process is swapped out of memory, a record of the sharable memory pages of the process is maintained. The sharable memory pages can then be repurposed. When the process is subsequently swapped back into memory, concurrently with the process running the sharable memory pages of the process are prefetched. If during this prefetching the process requests a memory page that is not currently in physical memory, a high priority I/O request is issued for that memory page. The high priority I/O request is placed at the front of an I/O queue, so the high priority I/O request is processed before the pending prefetch requests.

A flash memory management method is provided. According to the method, when a request to write the predetermined data to a page to which data has been written is made, the predetermined data is written to a log block corresponding to a data block containing the page. When a request to write the predetermined data to the page again is received, the predetermined data is written to an empty free page in the log block. Even if the same page is requested to be continuously written to, the management method allows this to be processed in one log block, thereby improving the effectiveness in the use of flash memory resources.

An information handling system and method provide for receiving, at an information storage device, a specification of reporting criteria for a plurality of information storage device parameters, receiving a specification of logical relationships for the reporting criteria, monitoring information storage device parameter values for the information storage device parameters, comparing the information storage device parameter values to the reporting criteria to obtain indications of whether the reporting criteria have been satisfied, applying the logical relationships to the indications, and, in response to the logical relationships applied to the indications yielding a first result, transmitting an alert notification including information storage device parameter values in the form of a single contiguous message for which a corresponding command to send the single contiguous message has not been received by the information storage device.

A work stealer apparatus includes a determination module. The determination module is to determine to steal work from a first hardware computation unit of a first type for a second hardware computation unit of a second type that is different than the first type. The work is to be queued in a first work queue, which is to correspond to the first hardware computation unit, and which is to be stored in a shared memory that is to be shared by the first and second hardware computation units. A synchronized work stealer module is to steal the work through a synchronized memory access to the first work queue. The synchronized memory access is to be synchronized relative to memory accesses to the first work queue from the first hardware computation unit.

Aspects include accessing data located on peripheral devices using synchronous input/output (I/O). A unit of work is received by an operating system (OS) executing on a processor. The unit of work includes an I/O request to access data located on a persistent storage control unit (SCU) that is external to the processor. It is determined that the I/O request should be serviced by a synchronous I/O. A synchronous I/O is initiated to the persistent SCU to service the I/O request based on determining that the I/O request should be serviced by a synchronous I/O. The unit of work is kept active while waiting for the synchronous I/O to complete. A notification that the I/O has completed is received and the unit of work is completed in response to receiving the notification.

Aspects include accessing data located on peripheral devices using synchronous input/output (I/O). A unit of work is received by an operating system (OS) executing on a processor. The unit of work includes an I/O request to access data located on a persistent storage control unit (SCU) that is external to the processor. It is determined that the I/O request should be serviced by a synchronous I/O. A synchronous I/O is initiated to the persistent SCU to service the I/O request based on determining that the I/O request should be serviced by a synchronous I/O. The unit of work is kept active while waiting for the synchronous I/O to complete. A notification that the I/O has completed is received and the unit of work is completed in response to receiving the notification.

A modular system for acquiring biometric data includes a plurality of data acquisition modules configured to sample biometric data from at least one respective input channel at a data acquisition rate. A representation of the sampled biometric data is stored in memory of each of the plurality of data acquisition modules. A central control system is in communication with each of the plurality of data acquisition modules through a bus. The central control system is configured to control communication of data, via the bus, with each of the plurality of data acquisition modules.