Broadcom Corporation

Broadcom Israel Research, Ltd.

Eliezer Aloni

Rafi Shalom

Shay Mizrachi

Caitlin Bestler

Dov Hirshfeld

Kobby Carmona

Uri Elzur

Eliezer Tamir

Uri El Zur

Amit Oren

Uri Tal

Aviv Greenberg

Assaf Grunfeld

Guy Corem

Ori Hanegbi

Merav Sicron

Predrag Kostic

Klaus Friedrich

Kan (Frankie) Fan

Scott Sterling McDaniel

Patricia Ann Thaler

Steven B Lindsay

Pavel Anissimov

Mcrav Sicron

Jacob Carmona

Hav Khauv

Yuval Eliyahu

Methods and systems for a plurality of physical layers for network connection may include coupling a MAC to one of a plurality of PHYs. The coupling to a specific PHY may be based on auto-detection of network activity, or network devices, via the PHYs. Also, one of the PHYs may be coupled to the MAC as a power-up default. The PHYs may be coupled to a same network, by, for example, cables. A first cable to a first PHY may couple it to a first network switch and a second cable to a second PHY may couple it to a second network switch. The first network switch may be rated to handle, for example, a greater data rate than the second network switch. The first cable may not be able to be used as a cable for the second PHY, and vice versa.

Method and system for a plurality of physical layers for network connection

Methods and systems for latency optimized ATS usage are disclosed. Aspects of one method may include communicating a memory access request using an untranslated address and also an address translation request using the same untranslated address, where the translation request may be sent without waiting for a result of the memory access request. The memory access request and the address translation request may be made in either order. A translation agent may be used to translate the untranslated address, and the translated address may be communicated to the device that made the memory access request. The translated address may also be used to make the memory access. Accordingly, by communicating the translated address without having to wait for completion of the memory access, or vice versa, the requesting device may reduce latency for memory accesses when using untranslated addresses.

Method and system for latency optimized ATS usage

Certain aspects of a method and system for quality of service and congestion management for converged network interface devices are disclosed. Aspects of a method may include processing at least one of: input/output (I/O) requests and network packets in a converged network interface card (CNIC) based on a class associated with each of the I/O requests and network packets by storing on the CNIC, information that identifies the I/O requests and network packets, without storing on the I/O requests and network packets on the CNIC.

Method and system for quality of service and congestion management for converged network interface devices

Certain aspects of a method and system for protocol offload in paravirtualized systems may be disclosed. Exemplary aspects of the method may include preposting of application buffers to a front-end driver rather than to a NIC in a paravirtualized system. The NIC may be enabled to place the received offloaded data packets into a received data buffer corresponding to a particular guest operating system (GOS). A back-end driver may be enabled to acknowledge the placed offloaded data packets. The back-end driver may be enabled to forward the received data buffer corresponding to the particular GOS to the front-end driver. The front-end driver may be enabled to copy offloaded data packets from a received data buffer corresponding to a particular GOS to the preposted application buffers.

Method and system for protocol offload in paravirtualized systems

Methods and systems for protocol offload and direct I/O with I/O sharing in a virtualized network environment are disclosed. Aspects of one method may include a plurality of GOSs sharing a single network interface circuitry, or a network interface card, (NIC) that may provide access to a network. The NIC may directly handle processing of data to be transmitted to the network and/or data received from the network for each of the GOSs without a TGOS for the GOSs handling the data to be transmitted to the network and/or data received from the network. The data may be copied directly from a buffer in the single NIC to an application buffer for one of the plurality of GOSs and/or directly from an application buffer for one of the plurality of GOSs to the buffer in the single NIC.

Method and system for protocol offload and direct I/O with I/O sharing in a virtualized network environment

Methods and systems for direct device access are disclosed. Aspects of one method may include a plurality of GOSs directly accessing a first network interface device, where the first network interface device may provide access to a network. One or more of the GOSs may be migrated to directly access a second network interface device, based on state information for each of the GOSs, where the state information may be maintained by the host. The GOSs may communicate data to a device coupled to the network by direct accessing the first and/or second network interface device. Similarly, the first and/or second network interface device may communicate data received from a device coupled to the network to one or more of the plurality of GOSs via direct access of the first and/or second network interface device.

Method and system for direct device access

A network interface device for use with a host computer that includes a host processor and a memory, and which is configured to concurrently run a master operating system and at least one virtual operating system. The device includes a bus interface that communicates over a bus with the host processor and the memory, and a network interface, which is coupled to send and receive data packets carrying data over a packet network. A protocol processor is coupled between the bus interface and the network interface so as to convey the data between the network interface and the memory while performing protocol processing on the data packets under instructions from the at least one virtual operating system, while bypassing the master operating system.

Network interface device serving multiple host operating systems

Certain aspects of a method and system for transparent transmission control protocol (TCP) offload with best effort direct placement of incoming traffic are disclosed. Aspects of a method may include collecting TCP segments in a network interface card (NIC) processor without transferring state information to a host processor every time a TCP segment is received. When an event occurs that terminates the collection of TCP segments, the NIC processor may generate a new aggregated TCP segment based on the collected TCP segments. If a placement sequence number corresponding to the generated new TCP segment for the particular network flow is received before the TCP segment is received, the generated new TCP segment may be transferred directly from the memory to the user buffer instead of transferring the data to a kernel buffer, which would require further copy by the host stack from kernel buffer to user buffer.

Method and system for transparent TCP offload with best effort direct placement of incoming traffic

Certain aspects of a method and system for transparent transmission control protocol (TCP) offload are disclosed. Aspects of a method may include collecting TCP segments in a network interface card (NIC) processor without transferring state information to a host system. The collected TCP segments may be buffered in a coalescer. The coalescer may verify that the network flow associated with the collected TCP segments has an entry in a flow lookup table (FLT). When the FLT is full, the coalescer may close a current entry and assign the network flow to the available entry. The coalescer may also update information in the FLT. When an event occurs that terminates the collection of TCP segments, the coalescer may generate a single aggregated TCP segment based on the collected TCP segments. The aggregated TCP segment and state information may be communicated to the host system for processing.

Method and system for transparent TCP offload

Methods and systems for a fast drop recovery for a TCP connection are disclosed. Aspects of one method may include a receiving device on a network receiving an out-of-order data. The receiving device may then signal to a transmitting device on the network, which sent the out-of-order packet, to enter a congestion alleviation mode without waiting for a delay period. The network packet transfer may be via TCP protocol, for example. The delay period may comprise a retransmission time-out period if the receiving device does not save isles. If the receiving device does save one or more isles, the delay period may be a period associated with delayed ACK. The signal may comprise a TCP option and/or an available TCP flag. The signal may also comprise, for example, three duplicate ACKs. Other similar signals may be used for networks that use other protocols than TCP. Upon receiving out-of-order data, the receiving device may, for example, send the signal and then assert a signal-sent flag if it is not already asserted. When a new packet is received in order, the signal-sent flag may be de-asserted.

Method and system for a fast drop recovery for a TCP connection

Certain aspects of a method and system for transparent TCP offload with a user space library are disclosed. Aspects of a method may include collecting TCP segments in a network interface card (NIC) without transferring state information to a host system. When an event occurs that terminates the collection of TCP segments, a single aggregated TCP segment based on the collected TCP segments may be generated. The aggregated TCP segment may be posted directly to a user space library, bypassing kernel processing of the aggregated TCP segment.

Method and system for transparent TCP offload (TTO) with a user space library

Certain aspects of a method and system for protocol offload in paravirtualized systems may be disclosed. Exemplary aspects of the method may include preposting of application buffers to a front-end driver rather than to a NIC in a paravirtualized system. The NIC may be enabled to place the received offloaded data packets into a received data buffer corresponding to a particular GOS. A back-end driver may be enabled to acknowledge the placed offloaded data packets. The back-end driver may be enabled to forward the received data buffer corresponding to the particular GOS to the front-end driver. The front-end driver may be enabled to copy offloaded data packets from a received data buffer corresponding to a particular guest operating system (GOS) to the preposted application buffers.

A network interface device includes a bus interface that communicates over a bus with a host processor and memory, and a network interface that sends and receive data packets carrying data over a packet network. A protocol processor conveys the data between the network interface and the memory via the bus interface while performing protocol offload processing on the data packets in accordance with multiple different application flows. The bus interface queues the data for transmission over the bus in a plurality of queues that are respectively assigned to the different application flows, and transmits the data over the bus according to the queues.

Network interface device with flow-oriented bus interface

Certain aspects of a method and system for transparent transmission control protocol (TCP) offload with transmit and receive coupling are disclosed. Aspects of a method may include collecting at least one received TCP segment for a determined network flow via a network interface card (NIC) processor. The state information for the received TCP segment and state information for transmitted TCP segments for the determined network flow may be stored at the NIC without transferring state information for the received TCP segment and the state information for the transmitted TCP segments to a host system communicatively coupled to the NIC. A new TCP segment comprising the collected TCP segments may be generated after a termination event occurs. The generated new TCP segment, new state information for the generated new TCP segment, and the state information for the transmitted TCP segments may be communicated to the host system for TCP offload.

Growing community of inventors

Zur Yigal, Israel

Eliezer Aloni