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:
Sep. 25, 2001
Filed:
Sep. 03, 1999
Brian James Martin, Worcester, MA (US);
George Garfield Peters, Hopkinton, MA (US);
Michael Scott Ryan, Durham, NC (US);
EMC Corporation, Hopkinton, MA (US);
Abstract
An improved method and apparatus for providing access between the processors and the mass storage devices of a computer system wherein an interprocessor bus interconnects the processors and adapters are connected from the interprocessor bus for communication between the processors and the mass storage devices and the system includes binding utility for communicating with the processors and the adapters to generate pairings between the processors and the adapters. A switch is connected between the adapters and the mass storage devices for connecting each adapter to each mass storage device and a binding mapper operates with the binding utility at each binding of a processor/adapter pair to enumerate the mass storage devices with which a processor/adapter pair is to communicate and determines a mass storage identifier by which the processor identifies the mass storage device. An address mapper references the binding mapper to construct and store an address map having processor set for each mass storage device. Each processor set includes an address map entry for each processor and is indexed by processor number. Each entry contains the mass storage device identifier corresponding to the optimal path of access to the corresponding mass storage device. The address mapper responds to each request for access to a mass storage device by providing the corresponding address map entry and the processor completes the access by directing the request through its paired disk device adapter as determined by the returned address map entry.