Alacritech, Inc.

A-tech Corporation

Auspex Systems, Inc.

David A Higgen

Peter K Craft

Clive M Philbrick

Laurence B Boucher

Daryl D Starr

Stephen E J Blightman

Paul Lester Popelka

Richard A Walter

Edward John Row

Lakshman Narayanaswamy

Stephen E Blightman

Tarun Kumar Tripathy

Murali Sundaramoorthy Repakula

Paul Brian Del Fante

Olive M Philbrick

Daniel Murray Jones

Leslie Thomas McCutcheon

Amod Prabhakar Bodas

Donald Wayne Sterk

A network host such as a caching device is disclosed that greatly increases the speed with which a server reads and writes data for clients. The host may include a specialized network interface that not only processes TCP but also parses received network file system headers, identifying those headers within the TCP data stream, separating them from any corresponding network file system data, and providing them separately from that data to the network file system of the host for processing as a batch, all without any interrupt to the host. Similarly, the network file system of the host may communicate directly with the network interface by writing network file system headers directly to a register of the network interface to transmit data.

Network cache accelerator

A system for protocol processing in a computer network has an intelligent network interface card (INIC) or communication processing device (CPD) associated with a host computer. The INIC or CPD provides a fast-path that avoids host protocol processing for most large multipacket messages, greatly accelerating data communication. The INIC or CPD also assists the host for those message packets that are chosen for processing by host software layers. A communication control block (CCB) for a message is defined that allows DMA controllers of the INIC to move data, free of headers, directly to or from a destination or source in the host. The CCB can be passed back to the host for message processing by the host. The INIC or CPD contains hardware circuits configured for protocol processing that can perform that specific task faster than the host CPU. One embodiment includes a processor providing transmit, receive and management processing, with full duplex communication for four fast Ethernet nodes.

Intelligent network interface system and method for accelerated protocol processing

An intelligent network interface card (INIC) or communication processing device (CPD) works with a host computer for data communication. The device provides a fast-path that avoids protocol processing for most messages, greatly accelerating data transfer and offloading time-intensive processing tasks from the host CPU. The host retains a fallback processing capability for messages that do not fit fast-path criteria, with the device providing assistance such as validation even for slow-path messages, and messages being selected for either fast-path or slow-path processing. A context for a connection is defined that allows the device to move data, free of headers, directly to or from a destination or source in the host. The context can be passed back to the host for message processing by the host. The device contains specialized hardware circuits that are much faster at their specific tasks than a general purpose CPU. A preferred embodiment includes a trio of pipelined processors devoted to transmit, receive and utility processing, providing full duplex communication for four Fast Ethernet nodes.

Method and apparatus for processing received network packets on a network interface for a computer

Intelligent network interface system and method for protocol processing

Parsing a packet header

A system for protocol processing in a computer network has an intelligent network interface card (INIC) or communication processing device (CPD) associated with a host computer. The INIC provides a fast-path that avoids protocol processing for most large multipacket messages, greatly accelerating data communication. The INIC also assists the host for those message packets that are chosen for processing by host software layers. A communication control block for a message is defined that allows DMA controllers of the INIC to move data, free of headers, directly to or from a destination or source in the host. The context is stored in the INIC as a communication control block (CCB) that can be passed back to the host for message processing by the host. The INIC contains specialized hardware circuits that are much faster at their specific tasks than a general purpose CPU. A preferred embodiment includes a trio of pipelined processors with separate processors devoted to transmit, receive and management processing, with full duplex communication for four fast Ethernet nodes.

A host CPU runs a network protocol processing stack that provides instructions not only to process network messages but also to allocate processing of certain network messages to a specialized network communication device, offloading some of the most time consuming protocol processing from the host CPU to the network communication device. By allocating common and time consuming network processes to the device, while retaining the ability to handle less time intensive and more varied processing on the host stack, the network communication device can be relatively simple and cost effective. The host CPU, operating according to instructions from the stack, and the network communication device together determine whether and to what extent a given message is processed by the host CPU or by the network communication device.

TCP/IP offload device

Method and apparatus for distributing network traffic processing on a multiprocessor computer

Intelligent network interface device and system for accelerated communication

A Network Interface device (NI device) coupled to a host computer receives a multi-packet message from a network (for example, the Internet) and DMAs the data portions of the various packets directly into a destination in application memory on the host computer. The address of the destination is determined by supplying a first part of the first packet to an application program such that the application program returns the address of the destination. The address is supplied by the host computer to the NI device so that the NI device can DMA the data portions of the various packets directly into the destination. In some embodiments the NI device is an expansion card added to the host computer, whereas in other embodiments the NI device is a part of the host computer.

Obtaining a destination address so that a network interface device can write network data without headers directly into host memory

A system for protocol processing in a computer network has a TCP/IP Offload Network Interface Device (TONID) associated with a host computer. The TONID provides a fast-path that avoids protocol processing for most large multi-packet messages, greatly accelerating data communication. The TONID also assists the host for those message packets that are chosen for processing by host software layers. A communication control block for a message is defined that allows DMA controllers of the TONID to move data, free of headers, directly to or from a destination or source in the host. The context is stored in the TONID as a communication control block (CCB) that can be passed back to the host for message processing by the host. The TONID contains specialized hardware circuits that are much faster at their specific tasks than a general purpose CPU. A preferred embodiment includes a trio of pipelined processors with separate processors devoted to transmit, receive and management processing, with full duplex communication for four fast Ethernet nodes.

TCP/IP offload network interface device

Growing community of inventors

Saratoga, CA, United States of America

David A Higgen