Electrical computers and digital data processing systems: input/ – Intrasystem connection – Bus access regulation
Reexamination Certificate
1997-10-01
2001-06-12
Beausoleil, Robert (Department: 2181)
Electrical computers and digital data processing systems: input/
Intrasystem connection
Bus access regulation
C710S108000, C713S001000, C713S002000, C713S100000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06247080
ABSTRACT:
RELATED APPLICATIONS
This application is related to U.S. application Ser. No.: 08/942,309, entitled “HOT ADD OF DEVICES SOFTWARE ARCHITECTURE”, U.S. application Ser. No.: 08/942,311, entitled “HOT SWAP OF DEVICES SOFTWARE ARCHITECTURE”, U.S. application Ser. No.: 08/942,457, entitled “METHOD FOR THE HOT SWAP OF DEVICES”, U.S. application Ser. No.: 08/943,072, entitled “METHOD FOR THE HOT ADD OF A NETWORK ADAPTER ON A SYSTEM INCLUDING A DYNAMICALLY LOADED ADAPTER DRIVER”, U.S. application Ser. No.: 08/942,069, entitled “METHOD FOR THE HOT ADD OF A MASS STORAGE ADAPTER ON A SYSTEM INCLUDING A STATICALLY LOADED ADAPTER DRIVER”, U.S. application Ser. No.: 08/942,465, entitled “METHOD FOR THE HOT ADD OF A NETWORK ADAPTER ON A SYSTEM INCLUDING A STATICALLY LOADED ADAPTER DRIVER”, U.S. application Ser. No.: 08/962,963, entitled “METHOD FOR THE HOT ADD OF A MASS STORAGE ADAPTER ON A SYSTEM INCLUDING A DYNAMICALLY LOADED ADAPTER DRIVER”, U.S. application Ser. No.: 08/943,078, entitled “METHOD FOR THE HOT SWAP OF A NETWORK ADAPTER ON A SYSTEM INCLUDING A DYNAMICALLY LOADED ADAPTER DRIVER”, U.S. application Ser. No.: 08/942,336, entitled “METHOD FOR THE HOT SWAP OF A MASS STORAGE ADAPTER ON A SYSTEM INCLUDING A STATICALLY LOADED ADAPTER DRIVER”, U.S. application Ser. No.: 08/942,459, entitled “METHOD FOR THE HOT SWAP OF A NETWORK ADAPTER ON A SYSTEM INCLUDING A STATICALLY LOADED ADAPTER DRIVER”, U.S. application Ser. No.: 08/942,458, entitled “METHOD FOR THE HOT SWAP OF A MASS STORAGE ADAPTER ON A SYSTEM INCLUDING A DYNAMICALLY LOADED ADAPTER DRIVER”, U.S. application Ser. No. 08/942,282, entitled “Apparatus For Computer Implemented Hot-Swap And Hot-Add,” and U.S. application Ser. No. 08/941,970, entitled “Method For Computer Implemented Hot-Swap And Hot-Add”, which are being filed concurrently herewith on Oct. 1, 1997.
APPENDICES
Appendix A, which forms a part of this disclosure, is a list of commonly owned copending U.S. patent applications. Each one of the applications listed in Appendix A is hereby incorporated herein in its entirety by reference thereto.
COPYRIGHT RIGHTS
A portion of the disclosure of this patent document contains material which is subject to copyright protection. The copyright owner has no objection to the facsimile reproduction by anyone of the patent document or the patent disclosure, as it appears in the Patent and Trademark Office patent files or records, but otherwise reserves all copyright rights whatsoever.
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
1. Field of the Invention
The field of the invention relates to I/O adapters in computer systems. More particularly, the field of invention relates to the hot add and swap of adapters on a computer system.
2. Description of the Related Technology
As enterprise-class servers, which are central computers in a network that manage common data, become more powerful and more capable, they are also becoming ever more sophisticated and complex. For many companies, these changes lead to concerns over server reliability and manageability, particularly in light of the increasingly critical role of server-based applications. While in the past many systems administrators were comfortable with all of the various components that made up a standards-based network server, today's generation of servers can appear as an incomprehensible, unmanageable black box. Without visibility into the underlying behavior of the system, the administrator must “fly blind.” Too often, the only indicators the network manager has on the relative health of a particular server is whether or not it is running.
It is well-acknowledged that there is a lack of reliability and availability of most standards-based servers. Server downtime, resulting either from hardware or software faults or from regular maintenance, continues to be a significant problem. By one estimate, the cost of downtime in mission critical environments has risen to an annual total of $4.0 billion for U.S. businesses, with the average downtime event resulting in a $140 thousand loss in the retail industry and a $450 thousand loss in the securities industry. It has been reported that companies lose as much as $250 thousand in employee productivity for every 1% of computer downtime. With emerging Internet, intranet and collaborative applications taking on more essential business roles every day, the cost of network server downtime will continue to spiral upward.
A significant component of cost is hiring administration personnel. These costs decline dramatically when computer systems can be managed using a common set of tools, and where they don't require immediate attention when a failure occurs. Where a computer system can continue to operate even when components fail, and defer repair until a later time, administration costs become more manageable and predictable.
While hardware fault tolerance is an important element of an overall high availability architecture, it is only one piece of the puzzle. Studies show that a significant percentage of network server downtime is caused by transient faults in the I/O subsystem. These faults may be due, for example, to the device driver, the device firmware, or hardware which does not properly handle concurrent errors, and often causes servers to crash or hang. The result is hours of downtime per failure, while a system administrator discovers the failure, takes some action, and manually reboots the server. In many cases, data volumes on hard disk drives become corrupt and must be repaired when the volume is mounted. A dismount-and-mount cycle may result from the lack of “hot pluggability” or “hot plug” in current standards-based servers. Hot plug refers to the addition and swapping of peripheral adapters to an operational computer system. Diagnosing intermittent errors can be a frustrating and time-consuming process. For a system to deliver consistently high availability, it must be resilient to these types of faults.
Existing systems also do not have an interface to control the changing or addition of an adapter. Since any user on a network could be using a particular adapter on the server, system administrators need a software application that will control the flow of communications to an adapter before, during, and after a hot plug operation on an adapter.
Current operating systems do not by themselves provide the support users need to hot add and swap an adapter. System users need software that will freeze and resume the communications of their adapters in a controlled fashion. The software needs to support the hot add of various peripheral adapters such as mass storage and network adapters. Additionally, the software should support adapters that are designed for various bus systems such as Peripheral Component Interconnect, CardBus, Microchannel, Industrial Standard Architecture (ISA), and Extended ISA (EISA). System users also need software to support the hot add and swap of canisters and multi-function adapter cards, which are plug-in cards having more than one adapter.
In a typical PC-based server, upon the failure of an adapter, which is a printed circuit board containing microchips, the server must be powered down, the new adapter and adapter driver installed, the server powered back up and the operating system reconfigured.
However, various entities have tried to implement the hot plug of these adapters to a fault tolerant computer system. One significant difficulty in designing a hot plug system is protecting the circuitry contained on the adapter from being short-circuited when an adapter is added to a powered system. Typically, an adapter contains edge connectors which are located on one side of the printed circuit board. These edge connectors allow power to transfer from the system bus to the adapter, as well as supplying data paths between the bus and the adapter. These edge connectors fit into a slot on the bus on the computer system. A traditional hardware solution for “hot plug” systems includes increasing the length of at least one ground contact of the adapter, so that the ground contact on the edge connector is the first connec
Khalili Mehrdad
Mahalingam Mallikarjunan
Reed John M.
Wallach Walter August
Beausoleil Robert
Knobbe Martens Olson & Bear LLP
Micron Electronics Inc.
Vo Tim
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