Method of communicating data in an interconnect system

Abstract

A method is provided for communicating data in an interconnect system comprising a plurality of nodes. In one aspect, the method includes: issuing a command packet from a first node, the command packet comprising a respective header quadword and at least one respective data quadword for conveying a command to a second node, wherein the command is selected from a group comprising a direct memory access (DMA) command, an administrative write command, a memory copy write command, and a built in self test (BIST) command; receiving the command packet at the second node; issuing an acknowledgement packet from the second node, the acknowledgement packet comprising a respective header quadword for conveying an acknowledgement that the command packet has been received at the second node.

Description

CROSS REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATION[0001]This application is related to the subject matter disclosed in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09 / 633,088, entitled “Data Storage System,” filed on Aug. 4, 2000, now U.S. Pat. No. 6,658,478, and U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09 / 751,649, entitled “Communication Link Protocol Optimized for Storage Architectures”, filed simultaneously herewith on Dec. 29, 2000, both of which are assigned to the present Assignee and are incorporated herein by reference.TECHNICAL FIELD OF THE INVENTION[0002]The present invention relates generally to the field of data storage and, more particularly, to a method of communicating data in an interconnect system.BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION[0003]In the context of computer systems, enterprise storage architectures provide mass electronic storage of large amounts of data and information. The frenetic pace of technological advances in computing and networking infrastructure—combined with the rapid, large-scale socio...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

The present invention provides a method for improving the performance of a specialized storage system architecture with a cluster configuration. The method involves issuing a command packet from a first node to a second node, receiving the command packet at the second node, and acknowledging the command packet. Additionally, the invention provides a method for merging data and transferring it over a communication link to a remote node for writing into memory. Furthermore, the invention includes a method for calculating the parity of a local block and performing a direct memory access (DMA) operation to write the calculated parity to the memory of a remote node, without previously writing the calculated parity to the memory of the local node. These technical effects enhance the efficiency and performance of the storage system architecture.

Problems solved by technology

Furthermore, the nodes in the cluster provide redundancy.

However, for high-performance clusters, such as those implemented with RAID (Redundant Array of Inexpensive / Independent Disks) controllers, the previously developed cluster interconnects and associated protocols are inadequate or otherwise problematic.

For example, these previously developed cluster interconnects and associated protocols do not provide sufficient bandwidth to fully realize the potential of high-performance clusters.

Furthermore, the previously developed cluster interconnects and associated protocols require a significant software overhead, which reduces the processing power otherwise available for memory storage access.

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