NVM Hardware Assist Card Aggregates Command Completions
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Solution Overview
Problem
Traditional information handling systems face performance degradation, high host processor utilization, and reduced efficiency due to direct interaction with multiple non-volatile memory (NVM) storage devices, resulting in increased interrupt context-switching overhead and pre-emption of threads, which impairs scalability and system responsiveness.
Innovation Solution
A queue-based NVM hardware assist card that aggregates command completion messages from multiple NVM storage devices, providing a consolidated processing endpoint to the host processor, thereby reducing the need for individual device interactions and minimizing interrupt overhead through intelligent command processing and response aggregation.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Productivity
If the host processor directly interacts with multiple NVM storage devices, then data access functionality is provided, but interrupt context-switching overhead increases and system responsiveness deteriorates
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces an intermediary NVM hardware assist card positioned between the host processor and multiple NVM storage devices. This intermediary aggregates command completion messages from multiple storage devices and provides consolidated responses to the host processor, thereby reducing interrupt context-switching overhead while maintaining data access functionality.
2Productivity
If the host processor directly interacts with multiple NVM storage devices, then data access is enabled, but host processor utilization increases and efficiency decreases
Solution Approach 1:
The NVM hardware assist card serves as a mediator that handles direct interactions with multiple NVM storage devices, freeing the host processor from these complex interactions. The intermediary consolidates multiple storage device interfaces into a single managed interface, reducing host processor utilization while preserving data access capability.
3Reliability
If multiple individual device interactions are used, then complete command completion information is provided, but interrupt overhead increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent merges multiple individual command completion messages from different NVM storage devices into a single consolidated command completion message. This combining approach maintains complete command completion information while reducing interrupt overhead by processing multiple completions through a unified interrupt path.
Data Source
AI summary
A queue-based non-volatile memory (NVM) hardware assist card, information handling system, and method are disclosed herein. An embodiment of the queue-based NVM hardware assist card includes a plurality of downstream ports configured to be connected to a corresponding plurality of actual queue-based NVM storage devices, a plurality of upstream ports configured to appear as a plurality of apparent queue-based NVM storage devices, and a distinct upstream port of a different type than the plurality of upstream ports, the distinct upstream port for interacting with a host processor to receive a consolidated processing NVM command from and to return a consolidated processing NVM command completion indication, the queue-based NVM hardware assist card configured to aggregate multiple of the NVM command completion messages received via respective ones of the plurality of downstream ports from respective ones of the plurality of actual queue-based NVM storage devices and to generate the consolidated processing NVM command completion indication.