| 摘要 |
A hardware/firmwave layer comprising a Device Manager, an Information Manager, a Memory Manager, and a Process Manager (610, 620, 630, 640) contained in one or more semiconductor chips is disclosed. The hardware/firmware layer eliminates the need for an operating system. Each of the Managers comprises a microcontroller (612, 622, 632, 642) associated with a firmware embedded in ROM or Flash memory that contains instruction sets (614, 624, 634, 644) that cause the microcontroller to provide a designated task of device management, information management, memory management and process management. In another aspect of the invention, devices connected to the computer system are "smart devices", each device having a device microcontroller and embedded device drivers in a ROM or Flash memory. The hardware/firmware of the present invention does not need to search for available devices, provide diagnostic tests or obtain device drivers to communicate with the devices. Instead the microcontroller uses the embedded device driver to perform configuration and self diagnostic test as well as device operations. If the device is operational, device microcontroller sends an identification signal to the hardware/firmware of the CPU (202) to indicate availability of the device.
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