US 12,405,746 B2
Local storage access by out-of-band (OOB) processors in heterogeneous computing platforms
Adolfo S. Montero, Pflugerville, TX (US); Abeye Teshome, Austin, TX (US); and Alok Pant, Austin, TX (US)
Assigned to Dell Products, L.P., Round Rock, TX (US)
Filed by Dell Products, L.P., Round Rock, TX (US)
Filed on Aug. 2, 2023, as Appl. No. 18/363,879.
Prior Publication US 2025/0044978 A1, Feb. 6, 2025
Int. Cl. G06F 3/06 (2006.01)
CPC G06F 3/0655 (2013.01) [G06F 3/0604 (2013.01); G06F 3/0679 (2013.01)] 17 Claims
OG exemplary drawing
 
1. A heterogeneous computing platform, comprising:
an Out-of-Band (OOB) Microcontroller Unit (MCU) configured to periodically wake from an OOB MCU low-power state in response to a trigger signal originating within the OOB MCU; and
a memory coupled to the OOB MCU, the memory having program instructions stored thereon that, upon execution by the OOB MCU, cause the OOB MCU to perform operations comprising:
upon wake from the OOB MCU low-power state, receive an OOB command, while every host processor of the heterogeneous computing platform remains in a host processor low-power state;
in response to an indication that the OOB command requires a read or write operation, wake up a local storage device external to the heterogeneous computing platform from a local storage device low-power state through an Embedded Controller (EC) coupled to the OOB MCU; and
access the local storage device through the EC.