Address translation service for host queues

Abstract

Instead of using address translation cache (ATC) to translate addresses for host queues, bypass the ATC and directly use translated addresses. When creating the submission queues (SQ) or completion queues (CQ), the controller receives the untranslated addresses from the host, and the device is responsible for translating the untranslated addresses before accessing the host queues. The host queue pointers will directly use the translated addresses while bypassing the ATC. When bypassing the ATC, different flows can be used such as create queue command flow and invalidate operations. In a create queue command flow, the firmware (FW) performs address translation by interacting with a translation agent (TA) to receive the translated addresses. With an invalidate flow, the controller scans all untranslated addresses provided by the host at the queue creation time and compares the untranslated addresses against the invalidated address.