The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Jan. 12, 1999
Filed:
Jun. 28, 1996
Rodney A DeKoning, Wichita, KS (US);
Gerald J Fredin, Wichita, KS (US);
Symbios, Inc., Fort Collins, CO (US);
Abstract
Methods and associated apparatus in a RAID storage subsystem to enhance the performance of write operations for sequences of large buffers generally non-aligned with stripe boundaries in the RAID storage subsystem. In particular, the methods identify a starting non-aligned portion of each large buffer to be written to the RAID storage subsystem, an ending non-aligned portion of each large buffer to be written to the RAID subsystem, and a larger middle portion of the large buffer to be written to the RAID subsystem which is aligned with stripe boundaries of the RAID storage subsystem. The stripe-aligned middle portion is written to the RAID storage devices in a cache write through mode using stripe write operations to maximize data throughput. The starting and ending portions identified by the methods of the present invention are written to the cache memory in a write back mode such that they will eventually be posted to the RAID storage devices in due course through normal RAID processing. Special case processing of the methods of the present invention note the absence of a starting or ending non-aligned portions (e.g., a buffer having no non-aligned starting portion, or no non-aligned ending portion, or neither starting nor ending non-aligned portions).