Electrical computers and digital processing systems: multicomput – Computer-to-computer data addressing
Reexamination Certificate
1999-09-07
2004-12-07
Patel, Ajit (Department: 2661)
Electrical computers and digital processing systems: multicomput
Computer-to-computer data addressing
C709S229000, C709S250000, C710S037000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06829652
ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
The present invention relates generally to computers, and more particularly to communications between interconnected computer nodes, storage subsystems, and other network devices.
Assessments of server and input/output (I/O) technologies and their respective marketplaces make clear that server-to-server communications and server-to-I/O communications, will be increasingly based on a distributed model. Existing server architectures, based on a shared-address-space model, bus-oriented connections to I/O devices and I/O transactions based on a load/store memory model, have limitations.
A message-passing network system typically can include a plurality of host units interconnected via a network. Host units are intelligent devices attached to the network, used to communicate with other host units. In normal operations, the host unit interacts with I/O devices locally attached or I/O devices attached to remote host units.
FIG. 1
illustrates a general architecture for a message-passing network system. The message-passing network system in
FIG. 1
includes a plurality of host units or nodes
100
. Each host unit
100
is connected to a network
220
in order to communication with each other. In particular, network
220
includes links and one or more switches for routing requests using its defined link protocol between the host units
100
. This defined link protocol can be, for example, in the form of packets or cells. Each host unit
100
can be any type of computer or computing device, such as a server, a personal computer (PC), a mainframe computer, a workstation, etc. and may contain one or more I/O devices, such as a SCSI controller or hard disk drive, a tape drive, a Peripheral Component Interconnect (PCI) compatible device, or other I/O device.
Referring now to
FIG. 2
,
FIG. 2
illustrates the general architecture for network-based host unit
100
. Host unit
100
includes a host platform
150
with one or more host processors
151
and an I/O platform (IOP)
110
. IOP
110
includes one or more I/O processors
111
, I/O devices
180
and other local I/O resources. Each IOP
110
has access to a storage element such as a memory
170
. In
FIG. 2
, a remote request is transmitted using path
120
across a system network such as a system area network (SAN)
165
and is received by a SAN network interface card (SAN NIC)
160
. The incoming remote request is initially processed by SAN NIC
160
and then passed across a primary peripheral component interconnect (PCI) bus
140
into memory
170
. The remote request is then retrieved by host platform
150
for further processing. Host processor
151
is equipped with a host based network operating system (NOS) used to retrieve the remote request and a local operating system service module (OSM) to process the request.
After processing by the OSM, the remote request is forwarded to IOP
110
via primary PCI bus
140
.
1
/
0
processor
111
includes a hardware device module (HDM) used to further process the request. Afterwards, the remote request is directed across a secondary PCI bus
141
to an I/O controller
190
. I/O controller
190
completes the processing of the request by moving data directly from attached I/O device
180
, e.g., a hard disk drive, across bus
140
and
141
to memory
170
. The data is then gathered by the host platform
150
from memory
170
and sent out to the SAN NIC
160
across the primary PCI bus
140
for delivery. Data retrieved from the processed request is transferred multiple times across the PCI buses to and from host platform
150
, memory
170
, IOP
110
and I/O controller
190
.
This repetitive transfer of data reduces the overall processing efficiency and speed of the network system. Moreover, there are limitations on the number of electrical loads which may be placed on a PCI bus and the physical distance at which I/O devices can be placed.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
According to an embodiment of the present invention, a remote request is received from a remote node over a network by a remote aware software driver interface. The remote request is modified with a software converter to emulate a local request which can be processed locally.
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Blount Steve
Intel Corporation
Patel Ajit
Steiner Paul E.
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