Mellanox Technologies, Ltd.

Wojciech Wasko

Dotan David Levi

Natan Manevich

Ariel Almog

Bar Shapira

Paraskevas Bakopoulos

Maciek Machnikowski

Elad Mentovich

Ioannis (Giannis) Patronas

Dimitrios Syrivelis

Amit Mandelbaum

Teferet Geula

Liron Mula

Eitan Zahavi

Roee Moyal

Avi Urman

Hillel Chapman

Guy Lederman

Arnon Sattinger

Eliel Peretz

Dimitris Syrivelis

Ofir Sadeh

Jonathan Oliel

Eran Ben Elisha

Eyal Serbro

Roi Geuli

Mathias Blake

Adam Thompson

Minimum processing performed at a signal device level is enabled, such that the majority of the non-domain-specific processing can be offloaded to a processing device. For example, the processing device can receive signal data from a signal device, preprocess the signal data to obtain preprocessed signal data having a data format for domain-specific processing by software executed by at least one processing unit of a processing platform, and provide the preprocessed signal data for domain-specific processing by the software executed by the at least one processing unit.

Software-defined signal device systems

In one embodiment, a system includes a network interface controller to receive a first clock-synchronization message from a clock-synchronization leader device and send a second clock-synchronization messages to at least one clock-synchronization follower device, and a processor to execute software to generate the second clock-synchronization message, and generate a control dependency to condition sending the second clock-synchronization message by the network interface controller to the at least one clock-synchronization follower device on the network interface controller receiving the first clock-synchronization message from the clock-synchronization leader device.

Synchronous clock synchronization messaging

A network interface device includes a local register and packet processing circuitry coupled to the local register. The packet processing circuitry is to: capture a network packet transmitted by a software application running on an integrated computing system; capture, at time of transmission of the network packet, a value of a physical clock as a receive timestamp for subscriber entities that are running on the integrated computing system; store the receive timestamp in the local register; associate the receive timestamp from the local register with a first packet copy of the network packet; insert the first packet copy to a first receive pipeline of a first subscriber entity; associate the receive timestamp from the local register with a second packet copy of the network packet; and insert the second packet copy to a second receive pipeline of a second subscriber entity.

Precise multicast timestamping

In one embodiment, a processing system includes an interface controller to receive a data signal from a remote link partner over a link, and recover a clock signal from the received data signal, frequency generation circuitry to receive the recovered clock signal, and output a local clock signal responsively to the received recovered clock signal, wherein the interface controller is configured to drive a transmit symbol rate responsively to the local clock signal, and a digital control loop including the interface controller and the frequency generation circuitry, wherein the interface controller is configured to identify a clock drift, generate a digital control signal responsively to the clock drift, and send the digital control signal to the frequency generation circuitry, which is configured to adjust a frequency of the local clock signal responsively to the digital control signal in order to reduce the clock drift.

Hybrid clock synchronization

In one embodiment, a synchronized communication system includes a plurality of network devices, and clock connections to connect the network devices in a closed loop configuration, wherein the network devices are configured to distribute among the network devices a reference clock time from any selected one of the network devices.

Boundary clock synchronized loop

A network adapter includes a host interface and a scheduler. The host interface is configured to receive, from one or more hosts, packets for transmission to respective destinations over a network. The scheduler is configured to synchronize to a time-division schedule that is employed in the network, the time-division schedule specifying (i) multiple time-slots and (ii) multiple respective groups of the destinations that are reachable during the time-slots, and, based on the time-division schedule, to schedule transmission times of the packets to the network on time-slots during which the respective destinations of the packets are reachable.

Time-division multiplexing (TDM) scheduling in a network adapter

In one embodiment, a clock syntonization system includes a first compute node including a first physical hardware clock to operate at a first clock frequency, a second compute node, and an interconnect data bus to transfer data from the first compute node at a data rate indicative of the first clock frequency of the first physical hardware clock, and wherein the second compute node includes clock synchronization circuitry to derive a second clock frequency from the data rate of the transferred data, and provide a clock signal at the derived second clock frequency.

Syntonization through physical layer of interconnects

In one embodiment, a system includes a network interface controller including a device interface to connect to a processing device and receive a time synchronization marker message from an application running on the processing device, a network interface to send packets over a network, and packet processing circuitry to process the time synchronization marker message for sending via the network interface over the network to a slave clock device, generate a time synchronization follow-up message including a timestamp indicative of when the synchronization marker message egressed the network interface, and process the time synchronization follow-up message for sending via the network interface over the network to the slave clock device.

Clock synchronization NIC offload

In one embodiment, a clock synchronization system includes clock circuitry to maintain a clock running at a clock frequency, a clock controller, and a processor to execute software to generate clock update commands and provide the clock update commands to the clock controller, wherein the clock controller is configured to apply the clock update commands to the clock, store a holdover frequency command to maintain the clock during a failure of the clock update commands, apply the holdover frequency command to the clock responsively to detecting the failure.

Clock adjustment holdover

Network devices and associated methods are provided for synchronization in an optically switched network. The network device includes one or more ports in communication with a plurality of devices via an optical switch. The one or more ports receive a master clock signal having a first frequency from a first device of the plurality of devices. The network device includes a local clock in communication with the one or more ports and operating at a second frequency. The network device includes a synchronization manager in communication with the one or more ports and the local clock and configured to be enabled and disabled. When the synchronization manager is enabled, it receives the master clock signal via the one or more ports and transmits an instruction to the local clock to operate at the first frequency.

Synchronization of optically switched networks

In one embodiment, a communication system includes network devices, each comprising a network interface to receive at least one data stream, a given network device being configured to recover a remote clock from the at least one data stream received by the given network device, a frequency synthesizer to generate a clock signal and output the clock signal to each of the network devices, wherein the given network device is configured to find a clock frequency differential between the clock signal and the recovered remote clock, and provide a control signal to the frequency synthesizer responsively to the clock frequency differential, the control signal causes the frequency synthesizer to adjust the clock signal so as to iteratively reduce an absolute value of the clock frequency differential between the clock signal and the recovered remote clock.

Scalable synchronization of network devices

In one embodiment, a system includes a memory, a processing device including a device processor; and a device clock, and a peripheral device including an interface to share data with the processing device, a hardware clock, and processing circuitry to write respective interrupt signaling messages to the memory responsively to respective hardware clock values of the hardware clock, and wherein the device processor is configured, responsively to the respective interrupt signaling messages being written to the memory, to perform a time-dependent action.

System to trigger time-dependent action

In one embodiment, a device includes a hardware clock to maintain a clock value, a hardware counter to maintain an estimation of a dynamic error bound of the clock value, and a clock controller to intermittently discipline the hardware clock responsively to a remote clock, advance the hardware counter at a rate responsively to a clock drift, and adjust the hardware counter responsively to the hardware clock being disciplined.

Clock error-bound tracker

In one embodiment, a processing apparatus includes processing circuitry to process an event, a timestamping unit to generate a timestamp for the event, at least one register to store at least one parameter describing a hardware state of the processing circuitry, and timestamp correction processing circuitry to compute a time value as a correction to the generated timestamp responsively to the at least one parameter.

Accurate timestamp correction

A network device includes a port, a transmission pipeline and a time-stamping circuit. The port is configured for connecting to a network. The transmission pipeline includes multiple pipeline stages and is configured to process packets and to send the packets to the network via the port. The time-stamping circuit is configured to temporarily suspend at least some processing of at least a given packet in the transmission pipeline, to verify whether a pipeline stage having a variable processing delay, located downstream from the time-stamping circuit, meets an emptiness condition, and, only when the pipeline stage meets the emptiness condition, to time-stamp the given packet and resume the processing of the given packet.

Growing community of inventors

Młynek, Poland

Wojciech Wasko