International Business Machines Corporation

Tai-Chien Daisy Chang

Brian W Hart

Baltazar De Leon, Iii

Vikramjit Sethi

Marcus Bryan Grande

Jaime F Nualart

Herman Dietrich Dierks

Satya Prakesh Sharma

Gregory Scott Althaus

William James Hymas

Helmut Cossmann

A method and technique for updating firmware on a multi-protocol network adapter includes reading parameter values for a firmware update of a multi-protocol network adapter that specify classes of behavior for conducting the firmware update of the multi-protocol network adapter. An update tool determines a reset type defining a type of reset needed to activate the firmware update on the network adapter based on the parameter values, sends a message to the network adapter indicating that a firmware update process is beginning, sends a write request to the network adapter to write the firmware update to select communication protocol functions, and sends a reset request to select communication protocol functions to activate the firmware update using the reset type according to the parameter values.

Unified update tool for multi-protocol network adapter

A method and technique for updating firmware on a multi-protocol network adapter includes: reading parameter values for a firmware update to determine an update scope indicating one or more functions of the network adapter affected by the firmware update and a write scope indicating which of the one or more functions should receive a write request for writing the firmware update to the network adapter. The update tool is operable to: send a message indicating to the one or more functions based on the update scope that a firmware update process is beginning; send a write request to write the firmware update to the one or more functions based on the write scope; send a reset request to reset the one or more functions to activate the firmware update; and send a message indicating to the one or more functions that the firmware update process is completed.

Network input processing is distributed to multiple CPUs on multiprocessor systems to improve network throughput and take advantage of MP scalability. Packets are received by the network adapter and are distributed to N receive buffer pools set up by the device driver, based on N CPUs being available for input processing of packets. Each receive buffer pool has an associated CPU. Packets are direct memory accessed to one of the N receive buffer pools by using a hashing function, which is based on the source MAC address, source IP address, or the packet's source and destination TCP port numbers, or all or a combination of the foregoing. The hashing mechanism ensures that the sequence of packets within a given communication session will be preserved. Distribution is effected by the network adapter, which sends an interrupt to the CPU corresponding to the receive buffer pool, subsequent to the packet being DMAed into the buffer pool. This optimizes the efficiency of the MP system by eliminating any reliance on the scheduler and increasing the bandwidth between the device driver and the network adapter, while maintaining proper packet sequences. Parallelism is thereby increased on network I/O processing, eliminating CPU bottleneck for high speed network I/Os and, thus, improving network performance.

Network adapter utilizing a hashing function for distributing packets to multiple processors for parallel processing

Network input processing is distributed to multiple CPUs on multiprocessor systems to improve network throughput and take advantage of MP scalability. Packets received on the network are distributed to N high priority threads, wherein N is the number of CPUs on the system. N queues are provided to which the incoming packets are distributed. When one of the queues is started, one of the threads is scheduled to process packets on this queue at any one of the CPUs that is availableat the time. When all of the packets on the queue are processed, the thread becomes dormant. Packets are distributed to one of the N queues by using a hashing function based on the source MAC address, source IP address, or the packet's source and destination TCP port number, or all or a combination of the foregoing. The hashing mechanism ensures that the sequence of packets within a given communication session will be preserved. Distribution is effected by the device drivers of the system. Parallelism is thereby increased on network I/O processing, eliminating CPU bottleneck for high speed network I/Os, thereby improving network performance

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Austin, TX, United States of America

Tai-Chien Daisy Chang