METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR A FIRST DEVICE ACCESSING COMPUTER MEMORY AND A SECOND DEVICE DETECTING THE ACCESS AND RESPONDING BY PERFORMING SEQU ENCE OF ACTIONS

A method of controlling an input/output (I/O) device connected to a computer to facilitate fast I/O data transfers. An address space for the I/O device is created in the virtual memory of the computer, wherein the address space comprises virtual registers that are used to directly control the I/O device. In essence, control registers and/or memory of the I/O devices are mapped into the virtual address space, and the virtual address space is backed by control registers and/or memory on the I/O device. Thereafter, the I/O device detects writes to the address space. As a result, a pre-defined sequence of actions can be triggered in the I/O device by programming specified values into the data written into the mapped virtual address space.