Emc Corporation

Jacob Y Bast

Jack Justin Stiffler

Stuart P MacEachern

Raju C Bopardikar

James M Nolan

James A Wentworth

Gary A Cardone

Zdenek Radouch

David E Kaufman

Bruce D McLeod

A data system architecture is described that allows multiple processing and storage resources to be connected to multiple clients so as 1) to distribute the clients' workload efficiently across the available resources; and 2) to enable scaleable expansion, both in terms of the number of clients and in the number of resources. The major features of the architecture are separate, modular, client and resource elements that can be added independently, a high-performance cross-bar data switch interconnecting these various elements, separate serial communication paths for controlling the cross-bar switch settings, separate communication paths for passing control information among the various elements and a resource utilization methodology that enables clients to distribute processing or storage tasks across all available resources, thereby eliminating 'hot spots' resulting from uneven utilization of those resources.

Method and apparatus for implementing high-performance, scaleable data processing and storage systems

A procedure is described for determining which source to connect to which destination in a non-blocking crossbar switch through which a plurality of sources may be attempting to gain access to a plurality of destinations. To this end, a metric is dynamically associated with each source and with each destination. Matching of sources to destinations is accomplished by iteratively assigning the destination having the smallest metric of all currently unmatched destinations to the source having the smallest metric of all currently unmatched source.

Method and apparatus for determining connections in a crossbar switch

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Framingham, MA, United States of America

Jacob Y Bast