I/O bus abstraction for a cluster interconnection fabric

Details I/O bus abstraction for a cluster interconnection fabric I/O bus abstraction for a cluster interconnection fabric

1999-11-24

2003-07-08

Gaffin, Jeffrey (Department: 2182)

Electrical computers and digital data processing systems: input/

Input/output data processing

Input/output expansion

C710S316000, C710S120000, C709S241000

Reexamination Certificate

active

06591309

ABSTRACT:

FIELD
The invention generally relates to computers and more particularly to providing an I/O bus abstraction for a cluster interconnection fabric.
BACKGROUND
A cluster may include one or more hosts connected together by an interconnection fabric. In traditional clusters, hosts have locally attached I/O controllers connected to local I/O buses.
FIG. 1
illustrates a typical bus-based computer
100
, which includes a processor
102
connected to a host (or processor) bus
103
and an I/O and memory controller (or chipset)
104
. A local I/O bus
105
may be considered local to computer
100
because, among other factors, it is physically located within the same cabinet as the processor
102
(or within very close proximity to processor
102
). Local I/O bus
105
is connected to an I/O bridge
108
. Several I/O devices are attached to the local I/O bus
105
, including I/O controllers
110
and
112
and a Local Area Network (LAN) Network Interface Card (NIC)
114
. The I/O controllers
110
and
112
may be connected to one or more I/O devices, such as storage devices, hard disk drives, or the like. I/O bus
105
is a traditional I/O bus, such as a Peripheral Component Interconnect (PCI bus) a Industry Standard Architecture (ISA) bus or Extended ISA (EISA) bus, etc. A traditional I/O bus provides attachment points to which I/O controllers can be attached.
A bus-based computer, such as that shown in
FIG. 1
, has a number disadvantages and drawbacks. All of the I/O controllers on the I/O bus share the same power and clock domain and share a common address space. Due to the physical and electrical load limitations, only a relatively small number of I/O controllers may be attached to an I/O bus, and must be physically located within the same cabinet as the processor (or within very close proximity). Thus, the entire I/O bus is physically attached to a single computer system. Also, in traditional clusters, I/O controllers are not directly connected to the network or cluster, but are provided only as part of another host. Thus, the I/O controllers on the I/O bus of a computer system are directly visible (or detectable) and addressable only by that computer system or host, but are not directly visible or addressable to any other host in the cluster.
For example, the I/O controllers
110
and
112
are visible only to computer
100
, and are not visible or directly addressable to any other host which may be connected to LAN
120
. To allow another host computer on LAN
120
(not shown) to access the I/O controllers
110
and
112
of host
100
, the other host on LAN
120
must communicate through the processor
102
and the operating system of host computer
100
(rather than directly to the I/O controllers
110
and
112
).
Therefore, bus-based computer systems provide a very inflexible arrangement for I/O resources. As a result, there is a need for a technique that provides a much more flexible arrangement for I/O devices for computer systems.
SUMMARY
According to an embodiment of the invention, a host to be coupled to a cluster interconnection fabric including one or more fabric-attached I/O controllers. The host includes a processor, a memory coupled to the processor and an operating system. The operating system includes an I/O bus abstraction for the cluster interconnection fabric.


REFERENCES:
patent: 5043938 (1991-08-01), Ebersole
patent: 5991797 (1999-11-01), Futral et al.
patent: 6473827 (2002-10-01), McMillen et al.
Microsoft Corporation, “Plug and Play for Windows 2000 White Paper”, In Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional, 1999, pp. 1-16.

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