International Business Machines Corporation

Ibm (schweiz) Ag

Tal Sostheim

Giora Biran

Igor Chirashnya

Claudiu Schiller

Hrvoje Bilic

Georgy Machulsky

Vadim Makhervaks

Shaul Yohai Yifrach

Alexander Mesh

Mark Epshtein

A method for dynamic management of Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) reassembly buffers in hardware (e.g., in a TCP/IP offload engine (TOE)). The method comprises: providing a plurality of data blocks and an indirect list; pointing, via entries in the indirect list, to allocated data blocks in the plurality of data blocks that currently store incoming data; if a free data block in the plurality of data blocks is required for the storage of incoming data, allocating the free data block for storing incoming data; and, if an allocated data block in the plurality of data blocks is no longer needed for storing incoming data, deallocating the allocated data block such that the deallocated data block becomes a free data block.

Method for dynamic management of TCP reassembly buffers

Methods, apparatus and systems for controlling flow of data between a memory of a host computer system and a data communications interface for communicating data between the host computer system and a data communications network. In an example embodiment, an apparatus includes a descriptor table for storing a plurality of descriptors for access by the host computer system and data communications interface. Descriptor logic generates the descriptors for storage in the descriptor table. The descriptors include a branch descriptor comprising a link to another descriptor in the table.

Controlling flow of data between data processing systems via a memory

Apparatus, methods and systems for controlling data flow between data processing systems. In an example embodiment, the apparatus includes descriptor logic for generating a plurality of descriptors including a frame descriptor defining a data packet to be communicated between a location in the memory and a data processing system, and a pointer descriptor identifying the location in the memory. The apparatus also includes a descriptor table for storing descriptors generated by the descriptor logic for access by the data processing systems.

A network interface device includes receive logic, which is coupled to receive from a network a sequence of data packets, each packet including respective header data. A protocol processor is coupled to read and process the header data so as to identify a group of the received packets that contain respective fragments of a data frame, the fragments having a fragment order within the data frame. Host interface logic is coupled to a host memory accessible by a host processor, and is controlled by the protocol processor so as to allocate space for the data frame in the host memory, and to reassemble the fragments of the data frame in the fragment order in the space allocated in the host memory.

Wire speed reassembly of data frames

A network interface device includes host interface logic, arranged to receive from a host processor a frame of outgoing data that includes outgoing header information and outgoing payload data, and to separate the header information from the payload data. A transmit protocol processor is coupled to read and process the outgoing header information from the outgoing header memory so as to generate at least one outgoing packet header in accordance with a predetermined network protocol. Transmit logic is coupled to receive and associate the at least one outgoing packet header with the outgoing payload data from the outgoing data memory, so as to generate at least one outgoing data packet for transmission over a network in accordance with the protocol.

Network adapter with embedded deep packet processing

In a computer network system that includes a multiplicity of nodes interconnected by a network of switches, wherein the nodes are linked to the network by respective data link adapters, a method for testing the adapters. One of the nodes is selected to serve as a destination node, and data are conveyed at a controlled rate from a plurality of the nodes, other than the destination node, through the respective adapters to the destination node. An error is detected in the data conveyed from one of the nodes so as to identify a fault in the adapter of that node.

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Kiryat Tivon, Israel

Tal Sostheim