|Publication number||US5864738 A|
|Application number||US 08/614,859|
|Publication date||26 Jan 1999|
|Filing date||13 Mar 1996|
|Priority date||13 Mar 1996|
|Publication number||08614859, 614859, US 5864738 A, US 5864738A, US-A-5864738, US5864738 A, US5864738A|
|Inventors||Richard E. Kessler, Steven M. Oberlin, Steven L. Scott|
|Original Assignee||Cray Research, Inc.|
|Export Citation||BiBTeX, EndNote, RefMan|
|Patent Citations (70), Non-Patent Citations (78), Referenced by (198), Classifications (12), Legal Events (14)|
|External Links: USPTO, USPTO Assignment, Espacenet|
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to massively parallel processors and in particular to a system and method for handling input and output in a massively parallel processor.
2. Background Information
Massively parallel processing (MPP) systems are computing systems comprised of hundreds or thousands of processing elements (PEs) individually interconnected by a common high-speed communication network. MPPs can be classified as either multicomputers or as multiprocessors. In a multicomputer MPP each PE is considered a stand-alone computer with its own central processor, local memory, and associated control logic. Each PE can only address its own local memory. It cannot directly read or write the local memory associated with another PE but instead must read data from another PE's memory by sending a message in an I/O-like packet to the target PE requesting that some data from its memory be formatted and sent back to the requesting PE, or vice versa for writes. Thus in a multicomputing system, each remote reference is essentially an I/O operation involving the target PE. This style of interprocessor communications is called "message passing." Message passing is a well-known and prevalent MPP programming model because multicomputers are relatively easy to build. The ease of construction of a multicomputer MPP arises from the use of commodity microprocessors in an environment that closely resembles their "natural habitat" (i.e., that hardware and software implementation envisioned by the microprocessor designers), that is, a network of small autonomous computers.
In a multiprocessor MPP, on the other hand, every PE can directly address all of memory, including the memory of another (remote) PE, without involving the processor at that PE. Instead of treating PE-to-remote-memory communications as an I/O operation, reads or writes to another PE's memory are accomplished in the same manner as reads or writes to the local memory. Therefore, multiprocessors have an ease-of-programming advantage over multicomputers.
A massively parallel processing system having attributes of both a multiprocessing and a multicomputing MPP is described in MULTIDIMENSIONAL INTERCONNECTION AND ROUTING NETWORK FOR AN MPP COMPUTER, U.S. Pat. No. 5,583,990 issued Dec. 10, 1996 by Birrittella, et al. That MPP system relies on a block transfer engine to perform data transfers without interrupting the local processor of the memory being read or written. In addition, prefetch message queues are used to prefetch data from remote locations whenever possible.
Such an approach addresses the problem of efficient transfer of data within the MPP system but does not extend these same efficiencies to the problem of communication between the MPP system and outside devices. The rate at which data can be transferred into and out of an MPP system is critical to the efficient use of the system. If communication between the outside world and the MPP system is too slow the MPP will only be useful in solving large scale problems (where the cost of loading the problem is dwarfed by the efficiencies of running on the MPP). In the MPP system described by Birrittella, et al., input and output from the MPP is handled through I/O gateways which transfer system data and control information between the host system and the MPP system. Like the regular processing nodes, each gateway can be used to transfer information to and from any processing element in the interconnect network. The I/O gateways are not, however, part of the toroidal mesh interconnect network. Instead they are attached as an appendage to processing nodes in two of the three interconnect dimensions.
Such an MPP system therefore has limited pathways from the outside world to the processing nodes of the MPP system. These limited pathways serve as a communications bottleneck which can throttle performance of the MPP system. What is needed is a system and method of transferring information into and out of an MPP system which overcomes this potential bottleneck.
The present invention is a system and method of transferring information between a peripheral device and an MPP system having an interconnect network and a plurality of processing nodes. Each processing element includes a processor, local memory and a router circuit connected to the interconnect network, the processor and the local memory. Each router circuit includes means for transferring data between the processor and the interconnect network and means for transferring data between the local memory and the interconnect network. An I/O controller is connected to a plurality of the router circuits. Data is then read from the peripheral device and transferred through the I/O controller to local memory of one of the processing elements.
Another aspect of the present invention is a massively parallel processing system having an interconnect network, a plurality of processing nodes and a plurality of I/O controllers. Each processing node includes a processor, local memory and a router circuit connected to the interconnect network, the processor and the local memory. Each I/O controller is connected to a plurality of router circuits and each router circuit includes means for transferring data between the processor and the interconnect network, means for transferring data between the local memory and the interconnect network and means for transferring data between an I/O controller and local memory of any of the plurality of processing nodes. The I/O controller can be connected to one or more peripheral devices.
The foregoing and other objects, features and advantages of the invention, as well as the presently preferred embodiments thereof, will become apparent upon reading and understanding the following detailed description and accompanying drawings in which:
FIG. 1 is a simplified block diagram of a massively parallel processor system according to the present invention;
FIG. 2 is a more detailed block diagram of aspects of the massively parallel processor system of FIG. 1;
FIG. 3 shows a block diagram of a processing element (PE), including a processor, its associated shell circuitry, and local memory;
FIG. 4 shows a block diagram of a processing element (PE) having external registers and an address centrifuge;
FIG. 5 is a table showing state codes associated with external registers;
FIG. 6 is a more detailed depiction of one embodiment of the system of FIG. 4;
FIG. 7 shows a Message Queue Control Word used to control message traffic between processor elements;
FIG. 8 shows one embodiment of a PE board having four PEs and one I/O controller according to the present invention;
FIG. 9 shows a block diagram of an peripheral channel node; and
FIG. 10 shows a block diagram of a four node peripheral channel implementation.
In the following Detailed Description of the Preferred Embodiments, reference is made to the accompanying Drawings which form a part hereof, and in which are shown by way of illustration specific embodiments in which the invention may be practiced. It is to be understood that other embodiments may be utilized and structural changes may be made without departing from the scope of the present invention.
A simplified block diagram of a massively parallel processor system 100 is shown in FIG. 1. In FIG. 1 MPP system 100 contains hundreds or thousands of processing elements 101 linked via interconnect network 106. I/O controllers 118 are used to connect PEs 101 to peripheral devices such as general purpose computer 108 and data storage device 109.
A more detailed block diagram of the MPP system of FIG. 1 is shown in FIG. 2. In the embodiment shown in FIG. 2, MPP system 100 is a MIMD massively parallel processing system with a physically distributed, globally addressable memory. MPP system 100 includes a large number of processing elements 101 connected to each other over an interconnect network 106. In addition, MPP system 100 includes I/O controllers 118 used to connect processing elements 101 to peripheral devices (such as general purpose computer 108 and data storage device 109 in FIG. 1). Each I/O controller 118 is connected to two or more processing elements 101. Bandwidth through each I/O controller 118 must therefore be sufficient to meet the aggregate demand of the PEs 101 attached to it.
Each processing element 101 includes a processor 102, a local memory 104, an interconnection network router 116 and a control circuit 114. Each processor 102 has a favored, low latency, high bandwidth path through control circuit 114 to a local memory 104, and longer latency, lower bandwidth access (via control circuit 114 and router 116) to the local memory 104 associated with other processors 102 over the interconnect network 106.
In one embodiment, control circuit 114 includes an external registers circuit such as that described in METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR EXTENDING MEMORY REFERENCE CAPABILITIES OF A MICROPROCESSOR, U.S. patent application Ser. No. 08/615,671, by Kessler et al., filed herewith, now pending, the description of which is hereby incorporated by reference. In one such embodiment, external registers within control circuit 114 are used to move data, including blocks of data, in an asynchronous (i.e., independent of the local processor) manner between processor 102 and remote memories 104 associated with other PEs 101 and between local memory 104 and remote processors 102 associated with other PEs 101. In addition, as is described in the Kessler et al. reference above, the external registers feature of control circuit 114 can be used to provide flexible addressing modes that permit a high degree of control over the redistribution of data between shared portions of the system memory.
FIG. 3 shows a simplified block diagram of one embodiment of processor element 101. In this embodiment processor 102 is a high-performance RISC (reduced instruction set computer) microprocessor 110 such as the EV5 microprocessor or the EV56 microprocessor, both members of the DEC Alpha series of microprocessors available from Digital Equipment Corporation. (The EV5 microprocessor is sold as DEC P/N 21164 while the EV56 is sold as DEC P/N 21164A.) Each microprocessor 110 is coupled through control circuit 114 to a local memory 104 that is a distributed portion of the globally-addressable system memory. Local memories 104 may be formed, for instance, by stacking a plurality of DRAM integrated circuits 120 configured as banks of memory operating under control of memory bank controllers 122. Microprocessor 110 is also connected to a nonvolatile memory 112 used to store relatively unchanging information such as, for instance, boot program code.
In one embodiment, interconnect network 106 is a 3-dimensional torus which, when connected, creates a 3-dimensional matrix of PEs 101. The torus design has several advantages, including high speed information transfers and the ability to avoid bad communication links. A toroidal interconnect network is also scalable in all three dimensions. Interconnect networks of this nature are described in more detail in the following copending and commonly assigned U.S. patent applications: U.S. Pat. No. 5,533,198, entitled "DIRECTION ORDER ROUTING IN MULTIPROCESSING SYSTEMS", by Gregory M. Thorson, issued Jul. 2, 1996 and U.S. Pat. No. 5,701,416, entitled "ADAPTIVE ROUTING MECHANISM FOR TORUS INTERCONNECTION NETWORK", by Thorson et al., issued Dec. 23, 1997, now U.S. Pat. No. 5,701,416, both of which are incorporated herein by reference. Router 116 of FIG. 3 supports this three dimensional interconnect by providing an input path and an output path for each of the x, y and z dimensions. One embodiment of a message passing methodology which can be used advantageously in such a toroidal network is described in MESSAGING IN DISTRIBUTED MEMORY MULTIPROCESSING SYSTEM, U.S. patent application Ser. No. 08/615,694, by Kessler et al., now pending, filed herewith.
In the system 110 shown in FIG. 3, I/O controller 118 is connected to four processing elements 101 (only one is shown). I/O controller 118 connects in turn to one or more other devices over a high speed peripheral channel. One such high-speed channel is described in RECONFIGURABLE RING-BASED NETWORK SYSTEM, U.S. patent application Ser. No. 08/614,860, by Scott et al., now pending, filed herewith.
As noted above, in certain embodiments microprocessor 110 is a commodity microprocessor such as the EV5 or the EV56 available from Digital Equipment Corporation. Commodity microprocessor implementations impose limitations on the types of application behaviors that can be supported efficiently. Control circuit 114 can be used to extend the capabilities of commodity microprocessor 110. One way for control circuit 114 to do that is illustrated in FIG. 4.
In the PE 101 shown in FIG. 4, control circuit 114 includes a plurality of external registers (E-registers) 126. E-registers 126 are mapped directly into the memory space of MPP system 100. This provides high-bandwidth and low-latency load and store access to E-registers 126. In addition, in one embodiment, special memory-mapped store operations are used to provoke E-registers 126 to reference normal memory locations. These special operations include the ability to move data to/from E-registers 126 and memory locations in any of the local memories 104, to perform memory synchronization operations, initiate message transfers (to, for instance, other microprocessors), and to perform local operations that otherwise cannot be performed quickly within microprocessor 110. E-registers 126 serve as source or destination for additional operands and can be used to store the results of operations on operands supplied by microprocessor 110 or even for the results of operations on those operands previously stored in E-registers 126.
In one embodiment, where microprocessor 110 is a 64-bit microprocessor, E-registers 126 support fully-symmetrical 64 and 32-bit operations.
In typical microprocessor systems, transactions used to move data between the microprocessor and the external world contain both an address and data as part of the transaction. Most systems that use microprocessors use the address portion of the transaction to reference memory. With E-registers, the data portion can be used to address the memory instead. This has several advantages. First, this allows the addresses to be the full width of a data word (in the DEC Alpha series microprocessors the data word is 64 bits in length). Most physical addresses on microprocessors are smaller than this. Second, the available data bandwidth is typically higher than the available address bandwidth. This implies that more addresses can be issued more quickly when the addresses come out the data path. Finally, it allows the addresses to bypass the on-chip address translation mechanism, allowing the external system to supplement the address translation capabilities of the microprocessor.
In one embodiment, each E-register operation places information on both external data path 18 and external address path 20. The information placed on external address path 20 encodes not only the operation identifier but can also be used to designate the source and/or destination E-registers. The information placed on external data path 18 provides 64-bits of information that the E-registers interpret as address information. Most of this 64-bit address information encodes the particular memory location in memory 16 being accessed; thus, even if the microprocessor itself only supports a very small address range via the normal addressing path, E-registers 126 can support a much larger space (nearly 64-bits worth).
In one embodiment, other operands may be needed for a particular memory-mapped store operation. In such an embodiment, a small identifier may be included as part of the information placed on external data path 18 in order that the E-registers 126 associated with these additional operands can be identified. For instance, additional operands may be needed to support an "address centrifuge" data distribution translation that can be automatically performed on the rest of the address. Address centrifuging is described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,765,181 entitled "SYSTEM AND METHOD OF ADDRESSING DISTRIBUTED MEMORY WITHIN A MASSIVELY PARALLEL PROCESSING SYSTEM", issued Jun. 9, 1998 by Oberlin et al., the description of which is hereby incorporated by reference. Additional operands may also be required in order to provide synchronization primitive values or to provide a stride value required by vector operations. In one such embodiment, vector operations (on fixed-size vectors of length 8) can be used to efficiently support bulk data transfers, including memory-to-memory, memory-to-register, and register-to memory.
E-register operations may also be designed to take advantage of any performance enhancements due to spatial locality in the microprocessor; thus all E-register operations to sequential E-registers may result in merged references to a block of sequential addresses.
In one embodiment the basic operations supported by the E-registers include: load a vector from memory 104 to a block of E-registers 126, store a vector from a block of E-registers 126 to memory 104, load from E-register 126 to a register within microprocessor 110, and store from a register within microprocessor 110 to an E-register 126. In addition, the loads/stores between the E-registers 126 and memory 104 can optionally be centrifuged (e.g. by centrifuge 124) to accomplish automatic hardware data distribution. Address translation and protection checking can also performed during these operations.
In one embodiment, atomic memory synchronization operations are supported by the external registers of control circuit 114. In one such embodiment, the synchronization operations include: masked swap, compare-and-swap, get-and-add, and get-and-increment.
To load data from a memory location to an internal microprocessor register using an E-register 126, the application first issues a GET E-register command. Then later microprocessor 110 loads the data from an E-register 110 into a microprocessor register via a LOAD E-register command. The application can issue many GET's before it must LOAD the data since there are many E-registers (up to 1024 per context in the preferred embodiment). This allows for many outstanding memory system references.
To store data from the microprocessor to a memory location, the microprocessor first stores the data from the on-chip register to the E-register using a STORE E-register command. Then the application sends the data in the E-register to a memory location using a PUT E-register command. Hereafter, we use the terms LOAD and STORE when referring to transfers between the E-registers and the processor registers. Other operations like GET and PUT transfer data between E-registers 126 and memory 104.
In one embodiment, each E-register 126 has a state that the application can poll to determine that state of outstanding memory references. A representative set of states is listed in FIG. 5. When a GET has been issued but the data has not yet been deposited in the selected E-register 126, the state transitions to EMPTY. FULL indicates that register 126 is filled with useful data. FULL-- F typically indicates that a GET operation failed, perhaps due to an out-of-bound memory reference. FULL-- SR indicates that the register has useful data, but a prior SEND (a special "message send") failed because a message queue at a remote PE was full.
Accesses to E-registers 126 are implicitly synchronized by the state codes. An attempt to LOAD from an E-register 126 that is in state EMPTY stalls the LOAD until the E-register 126 is filled. In one embodiment, a plurality of execution modes are provided and, depending on the execution mode set by the application, a LOAD to a FULL-- F E-register may cause an error interrupt. A LOAD from a FULL or FULL-- SR E-register 126 returns the E-register data with no error.
In the embodiment shown in FIG. 5, two bits of E-register state code (ERS code) are provided for each E-register 126. In one such embodiment, E-register states 30 can be queried with an ERS-- READ E-register operation. This command returns the 2-bit ERS codes for 32 adjacent E-registers 126. It can be used to determine if a GET has returned, for instance, though in the usual case the overhead of the ERS-- READ outweighs its benefit. It is most useful for E-register context switching. The operation ERS-- WRITE updates the ERS codes of a particular set of E-registers 126.
In one embodiment, the E-register states 30 are stored in a dual-ported RAM block which must be read (usually multiple times) for every E-register directed LOAD or STORE command. This RAM provides parallel access to multiple state code pairs on each reference. In one embodiment, each location in the RAM contains 32 state code pairs and a parity bit for a total of 65 bits. For a system having 640 E-registers 126, this RAM will be 20 lines deep.
In one embodiment, the RAM structure used to store the E-register state codes can accept a new read and a new write request every system clock and includes logic which detects when a read is being done from a location that is being simultaneously written. In that case, the read out data is bypassed and replaced with the write data to provide an up-to-date copy of the new value stored at that location in the same clock period. The read and write ports are arbitrated together since all references to the RAM require both a read and corresponding write operation.
In one embodiment, three special structures are provided to improve the apparent state code RAM read/write bandwidth. These are the ERS summary bits, the response flag merge and the request flag cache mechanisms.
The summary bits provide a low latency flag check for PUTs, E-- REG LOADs and for Mask/Offset/Operand block (MOB) references. In one embodiment, each ERS summary bit represents the summarized state of a sixteen word block of E-registers; two summary bits are provided on each line of the E-register state code RAM. A summary bit will be true only if all the associated E-register words are in one of the two non-faulted FULL states. The individual bits are immediately updated each time the associated RAM line is modified.
The request flag cache is a one or more entry content addressable memory (CAM) used as a write-back cache of the RAM lines which have been most recently referenced during FULL flag checks associated with E-register directed operations emerging from processor 110. It serves to buffer FULL checks and EMPTY writes associated with processor 110 requests in order to reduce the possibility of contention with returning GET responses/updates.
ERS-- READ and ERS-- WRITE operations also go through this cache. Although ERS-- WRITEs modify the entire line, a fall fetch of the specified line is first completed before the write proceeds so that no special sequencing is required for these operations. Likewise, an ERS-- READ causes the ERS data being read to be brought into the cache in order to simplify sequencing control.
With the exception of MOB and LOAD related flag checks, a request-side miss in the cache for any reason will cause an immediate writeback of the displaced victim line and a simultaneous fetch of the new line. MOB and LOAD checks that miss will only result in a line replacement if the ERS summary flag test fails.
ERS writes on returning responses which hit in the cache are directed to the cache rather than the RAM (which will be updated later on a victim writeback). Response-side misses do not disturb the cache but rather update the RAM directly.
Response updates may be stalled for a period of time during victim writebacks but otherwise should proceed unimpeded.
EMPTY writes for outgoing E-register requests are requested simultaneously with destination flag reads. The write will not take place until the flags to be set EMPTY are all in a non-EMPTY state.
Whereas the ERS summary bit and ERS request flag cache mechanisms serve to reduce contention for state code RAM bandwidth from the requester side, the response flag merge logic attempts to group together individual ERS FULL writes (thereby enhancing apparent write bandwidth) for the returning responses. This is required since the worst case write bandwidth into the RAM is one ERS code per system clock period (assuming each ERS code update is to a different line) while the desired sustained E-register write bandwidth requires at least twice that. The merge buffer implementation must minimize latency for individual response updates where no contention is encountered while allowing ERS update writes which do contend to merge if they are to the same line. Thus, responses may continue to be written into the E-- REG RAM even though the ERS write port may have begun to back up. Updates to the response flag require a read-modify-write sequence.
By accessing external memory through external registers 126 of control circuit 114, applications can access a very large address space, have many outstanding E-register memory references, manage bulk data transfers, and perform extended operations not directly supported by the microprocessor as well as additional multiprocessor synchronization and data-distribution primitives. All these enhancements increase the useability of the commodity microprocessor in a high-performance computing system.
In one embodiment of the systems shown in FIGS. 3 and 4, a memory location in the memory 104 local to a particular PE can be accessed in two ways: a direct (cacheable) load or store by the processor, or an indirect (non-cacheable) operation through E-registers 126. The virtual address used to access the memory location can be the same in both cases. Processor load and store instructions can reference only local memory. An on-chip DTB translates the virtual addresses to local physical addresses when the processor directly issues loads and stores. The shell circuitry translates the virtual address to a (either local or remote) physical address when the processor issues E-register GET and PUT references.
All direct loads and stores to memory are cacheable. All E-register references are non-cacheable. Since cacheable loads and stores can only reference local memory, cache coherence support is only required for the local cache relative to the local memory. Coherence will be maintained by using the back-map interface. The backmap contains a list of the physical addresses associated with the contents of a secondary cache kept within processor 110. (The primary cache contents are a subset of the secondary cache contents.) All E-register references consult the backmap before referencing the memory banks. If the referenced data could be in the secondary (or primary) cache, the shell circuitry initiates a transaction to withdraw the data from processor 110. The backmap address tags may be only partial tags; the tags need only be wide enough so that most E-register references that are not in the secondary cache do not unnecessarily probe processor 110. Our analysis suggests that the backmap tags need to be at minimum 8 bits wide for this.
In one embodiment, such as is shown in FIG. 4, control circuit 114 includes a hardware-implemented address centrifuge 124 used to convert a global address into a PE number and offset associated with a particular local memory 104. One such hardware-implemented address centrifuge is described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,765,181 entitled "SYSTEM AND METHOD OF ADDRESSING DISTRIBUTED MEMORY WITHIN A MASSIVELY PARALLEL PROCESSING SYSTEM", issued Jun. 9, 1998 by Oberlin et al., the description of which is hereby incorporated by reference. As noted above, an address centrifuge implementation distributes array data across local memories 104 of different processors 102. In the embodiment shown in FIG. 4 address centrifuge 124 is an integral part of the addressing path. The information necessary to generate the remote address comes from an index contained in a word written to the data path and from the centrifuge mask and base offset (extra arguments required to implement the address centrifuge). These arguments are stored in a block of E-registers 126 (the mask-offset block or MOB) indicated by a pointer field in the argument data. The centrifuge mask indicates the bits of the index that determine the processor element 101 where the memory location exists; the remaining bits determine the offset.
Use of an external address centrifuge eliminates the need for software centrifuging of remote addresses. The mask value read from the E-register indicated by the pointer field controls the centrifuge of the index. The base offset is added to the resulting offset that emerges from the centrifuge. Later, the resulting virtual offset is translated to a physical offset, and the virtual PE number is translated to a physical PE number.
FIG. 6 is a more detailed depiction of one embodiment of the system of FIG. 4. On each E-register reference microprocessor 110 supplies a data word 130 to control circuit 114 via data bus 18. At around the same time, microprocessor 110 places an address on address bus 20 which indicates that an external memory reference is to occur. Data word 130 includes an MOB field 132 and an index field 134. MOB field 132 is used to select one or more E-registers 126. In one embodiment MOB field 132 is a four word block of E-registers 126. In one such embodiment, one of the MOB E-registers 126 contains a centrifuge mask word 136 previously stored by microprocessor 110. Another contains a base offset 138. Address centrifuge 124 takes centrifuge mask word 136 and index field 134 and generates a PE number 140 and an offset 142. Base offset 138 is added to offset 142 to produce a segment offset 144. In one such embodiment, as is shown in FIG. 6, index field 134 contains a signed integer.
An example of the address translation flow on an E-register reference will be discussed next. In a PUT or GET instruction which will result in a global memory reference (i.e., a reference to local memory 104 of a remote PE 101), an argument comes out of data path 18 which includes the MOB pointer 132. (The implementation may cache a certain number of MOBs rather than read them from the E-register file each time. A cache of just a few entries may be sufficient since only one base offset per array should be necessary.) Mask word 136 is supplied to address centrifuge 124 together with the signed index from index field 134. Centrifuge 124 produces two outputs--the virtual PE (VPE) of 12 bits (PE number 140) and the offset of 38 bits plus a sign (offset 142). Base offset 138 is added to offset 142 from centrifuge 124. That produces the final system segment (SSEG) offset that will be used to index into the appropriate SSEG.
E-registers 126 can also have a local-only addressing mode. This mode bypasses the centrifuge and address translation mechanisms; (local) virtual addresses (system or user) come directly out data path 18 as the PUT/GET argument; all PE translation is avoided, and there is no base offset add.
VSEG field 146 (from the sum of the base offset and the offset output of the centrifuge) indexes directly into a segment translation table (STT) 148 that, among other things, determines the SSEG corresponding to the given VSEG. Each STT entry contains four fields: PE Base, PE Limit, SSEG and PROT. The PE Base field and the PE limit field provide the PE protection for distributed segments, which are ignored in the local-only case. (The PE limit field indicates the maximum logical PE (LPE) number while the PE Base field is added to VPE to produce the LPE number.)
Since each VSEG has its own PE base and limits, each segment referenced by the user program can be distributed differently. For instance, this can enable segment sharing by multiple applications that run on different processors. The SSEG field contains the system segment corresponding to the given VSEG. The PROT field determines the access-rights that the user-program has for the segment indicated in the SSEG field. There will be separate protection rights to access the local portion of the distributed segment (if present), and any remote portions of the distributed segment. After determining if the resultant logical PE is local or not, the hardware will apply either the local or remote permissions. The permissions include read-only, read-and-write, and no-read-or-write.
In one embodiment, system software can bypass the STT translation mechanism. Special GETs and PUTs (usually accessible only by the system) will interpret bits 37-32 of the virtual address as a SSEG (rather than interpreting bits 34-32 as the VSEG). There are no STT protection checks on these references, and the PE base add function is disabled.
After the centrifuge operation and the STT lookup, the E-register request is ready to cross the network. A local PE identifier register (L-- WHOAMI) contains the logical node ID of the local PE. By comparing the L-- WHOAMI register to the LPE result of PE translation, the hardware determines if the reference is local or remote. If it is remote, the hardware sends the request over the network (by consulting LUT 150 for routing directions). The network request contains the SSEG that was extracted from the STT along with SSEG offset 144. The combination of the SSEG and SSEG OFFSET yields system virtual address (SVA) 151.
Translation from system virtual address to physical address occurs at the PE containing the physical memory being accessed. The system virtual address 151 (either produced by a local or remote GET or PUT) is converted into a physical address by means of a remote translation buffer (RTB) 152.
In one embodiment circuit 114 includes be an E-register request queue (E-- QUEUE) capable of absorbing some number of E-register block writing (WRITE-- BLOCK) requests. This is so processor 110 may proceed issuing E-register commands even though the external circuitry may not service the requests as fast as the processor is issuing them. An E-register request queue entry should include storage for the physical address bits that contain the command and target E-register pointer as well as storage for data arguments.
In one embodiment, E-- QUEUE is a FIFO structure used to buffer multiple E-register directed commands. All processor 110 to E-register directed WRITE-- BLOCK operations are enqueued in this FIFO as they emerge from processor 110. Only E-register LOAD and ERS-- READ operations are not enqueued but instead are processed immediately.
In one embodiment, processor 110 LOADs from E-registers 126 are not processed until all prior E-register commands have been placed on the E-- QUEUE (and thus have completed their own interrogation of the cache). In such an embodiment, LOAD related cache line allocation is guaranteed not to interfere with other ERS flag requester-side activities. MOB flag checks and source/destination flag checks do, however, contend with each other when both miss in the cache. In these cases, when both request new line allocations, the MOB will be allowed to go first.
The E-- QUEUE structure consists of at least sixteen 86-bit words of RAM storage. Each 86-bit word in the single-read/single-write ported RAM consists of a 21-bit address/command field and a 64-bit data field and a parity bit.
E-register directed WRITE-- BLOCK operations (commands) are placed in the E-- QUEUE structure to be presented to an E-- CMD request generation pipeline. Prior to entering the E-- QUEUE, required E-register resources (MOB registers and data source or destination registers) are checked for availability and disqualifying error conditions. Assuming all resources are available, the E-register commands enter the E-- QUEUE. They will subsequently be removed from the E-- QUEUE by the E-- CMD pipeline in the order in which they originally issued to the queue.
As a command arrives at the front of the E-- QUEUE structure, it is examined by the E-- CMD functional block to determine what type of request it is. Depending on the type of command, the E-- CMD block must retrieve MOB values from the E-registers, perform address translation, check for access violations and either fetch data (for PUTs, SENDs, or atomic operations (A-- OPs)) from the E-registers or store processor 110 sourced data to the E-register array.
In the preferred embodiment of circuit 114, GET's are allowed to issue speculatively. That is, memory range or permission errors do not trigger interrupts immediately; they instead put E-register 126 in state FULL-- F which may later cause an interrupt. This allows GET's to issue in a loop, for example, prior to index testing for loop completion in order to allow the maximum data prefetch time. The E-register state may subsequently be changed from the FULL-- F state by a legal GET, STORE, ERS-- WRITE, or other operation.
To preserve the order of E-register operations, it is necessary for hardware to check the E-register state (ERS) code for target E-registers (and for those E-registers indicated by MOB field 132) prior to placing most E-register commands into E-register request queue E-- QUEUE. If an E-register is EMPTY, and the command would set it EMPTY if it issued, it must first wait for the earlier operation to complete setting the register FULL again. If an E-register is a source of data for the operation, the E-register state code must be either FULL-- SR or FULL or the operation will stall. The operation should be aborted (and appropriate error flags set), if a source E-register has been marked FULL-- F.
Destination E-register state codes are set EMPTY as the command is accepted from the processor bus into E-- QUEUE.
When a command reaches the head of the queue, it is not necessary to recheck the E-register state code for any operand E-registers: It is quite possible that some have been set EMPTY by commands that lie farther back in the queue, but until the later command actually reaches the head of the queue the data in the E-register remains intact.
Automatic merging of stores in processors such as the EV5 can be used to advantage. The automatic merging of stores in the EV5 write buffers allows multiple similar commands to be delivered to the trigger locations in a single bus cycle. In many cases, this capability can provide a four times improvement in data bandwidth for processor 110 transactions. Some E-register commands (e.g. GETV and PUTV) which act upon more than a single E-register require the E-register identifier to be right shifted in order for multiple commands to merge.
Special message packets can be sent via E-registers 126. In one embodiment, message queues stored in circuit 114 are generalized to be completely memory-mapped, allowing the creation of multiple queues by user or system code. Such an approach allows the user or system to define an arbitrary number of (user or system level) message queues; each can be of variable size and have selectable interrupt thresholds. Furthermore, each individual queue can start at any legal address and be any size (in one embodiment, however, queue sizes cannot exceed 64 MB). To do this, a control word is defined for each message queue. The control word describes the current state of the queue, including: the message queue size (limit), interrupt threshold, and the current queue position (tail).
In one embodiment, the SEND command sends 64-byte messages to a message queue residing at a predefined memory location. Messages are transmitted by first assembling the 64 bytes into an aligned block of eight E-registers and then issuing a SEND command. Many queues can exist simultaneously in memory. A message queue is created by constructing and storing a Message Queue Control Word (MQCW) 170 such as is shown in FIG. 7. FIG. 7 shows the fields in MQCW 170. Tail pointer 172 is a relative offset that is added to the address of the message queue control word to identify the tail of the queue (next available location). Tail pointer 172 is incremented by one as each message successfully arrives; it therefore has a granularity of 64 bytes. Tail pointer 172 should always be greater than 0 to avoid over-writing MQCW 170.
Limit 174 is a 21 bit value that indicates the top of the message queue. Sizes up to 128 MB are supported. Each time a message arrives, limit 174 is compared to tail pointer 172: if tail pointer 172 is greater than or equal to limit 174, the message is rejected and tail pointer 172 is not incremented.
Threshold 176 is a soft limit. As messages arrive and pass the limit test, tail pointer 172 is incremented and compared to threshold 176. If tail pointer 172 equals threshold 176, an interrupt is delivered to processor 110. Unlike the situation when tail pointer 172 is greater than or equal to limit 174, messages are not rejected when tail pointer 172 is greater than or equal to threshold 176.
One or more control words 170 are stored in local memory 104 of each PE 101. When a message arrives, the System Virtual Address (SVA) of control word 170 is added to tail pointer 172 to generate a new SVA for the message. The message SVA is checked for range errors prior to storing the message in the queue. If the store succeeds, an ACK response is returned to the sender. If the address is illegal, or there is a memory error while reading control word 170, a NACK containing error information is returned to the sender and the message store is aborted.
As the message exits the source E-registers, the ERS codes of the eight E-registers are set to empty. As the message successfully arrives in the destination queue, all eight source E-registers are set to the FULL state. If the message is rejected because the message queue is full, all eight source E-registers are set to FULL-- SR. If, however, there was a range or memory error at the target message queue the eight source E-registers are set to FULL-- F.
Each microprocessor 110 must maintain its own Head pointer to indicate the last message received (removed) from a message queue. This can be done in either hardware or software. To receive a message, the Head is added to the System Virtual Address of control word 170 and the message is retrieved from the resulting address with a GETV8 or direct cacheable load. Microprocessor 110 must compare tail pointer 172 with the head pointer for the message queue to determine when the queue has been emptied.
Note that since MQCW 170 exists in an arbitrary memory location in local memory 104, atomic memory operations can be used to update MQCW 170 and to manage the queues. In addition, the message queue control mechanism should be structured so that a processor initiated atomic operation on a control word 170 will exactly affect the flow of messages. For instance, if a swap is performed to redirect messages from one region of a message queue to another, the returned control word 170 should exactly represent the last message stored at the old region. No messages should be lost.
In one embodiment, message queue interrupt hardware captures the address of the control word 170 of the first message queue to signal a Threshold Exceeded interrupt. Hardware can also be used to record the fact that multiple queues have signalled Threshold Exceeded so that appropriate actions to service the additional interrupts can be initiated. An embodiment of the above-described message passing facility is described in "MESSAGING IN DISTRIBUTED MEMORY PROCESSING SYSTEM", U.S. patent application Ser. No. 08/615,694, filed herewith, now pending, the description of which is hereby incorporated by reference.
Two or more processor elements 101 are connected to each I/O controller 118. In one embodiment each I/O controller 118 contains a peripheral channel interface capable of sustaining a data bandwidth of approximately 300 MB/s concurrently in both the incoming and outgoing directions. The peripheral channels allow MPP system 100 to communicate directly with mainframes and peripherals having peripheral channel interfaces and, through channels adapters, to other networks such as HiPPi, Ethernet, FDDI, ATM, SCSI, etc. Since the standard peripheral channel is used for all I/O, system 100 requires only one type of bulkhead connector and one PE board type.
In one embodiment, each MPP system 100 includes a plurality of PE boards. Each PE board includes an I/O Controller 118 connected to four PEs 101 (through routers 116). Such a configuration is shown in FIG. 8. Each I/O controller 118 includes a controller chip 200 and a peripheral channel interface 220. I/O channels are globally addressable, and may be controlled by the OS from any PE 101. That is, an I/O controller 118 has no special relationship with the four PEs to which it is connected.
Each processor 110 communicates with I/O devices connected to peripheral channel interface 220 via GETs, PUTs and SENDs to memory mapped register locations. Processor 110 initiates an I/O transfer by SENDing a transfer initiation message (TIM) to the appropriate I/O controller. GETs and PUTs are used for miscellaneous status-reading and for configuration of controllers. As in memory transfers, message transfers occur independently of the local processor 110.
Each controller chip 200 includes logic for sending and receiving messages, for acting as a slave to incoming direct memory access (DMA) requests and for acting as a master for up to two concurrent DMA transfers, one outgoing and one incoming. For instance, an I/O controller 118 notifies the operating system (OS) of certain events (such as an incoming message) by sending messages to an OS-designated PE 101. Controllers 118 also include buffering for both incoming and outgoing data. In contrast to processor elements 101, I/O controllers 118 issue GET and PUT packets directly rather than through an E-register circuit. (In effect, I/O controller 118 emulates the E-register message passing facility without the use of E-registers.)
All DMA transfers require a set of transfer registers that describe the length, address and local memory distribution of the transfer. These are provided by the MPP system 100 OS for DMA transfers that it masters and by an outside DMA master for transfers in which MPP system 100 is slave. (Even in the latter case, however, the register values may have been supplied originally by the system 100 OS.)
A separate MQCW 170 address is used for each type of TIM: outgoing messages, outgoing DMA transfers and incoming DMA transfers. TIMs for outgoing messages include a pointer to the message packet being transmitted. TIMs for incoming or outgoing DMA transfers include a set of transfer register values.
Upon receipt of a TIM, the I/O controller automatically transmits the outgoing message or performs the requested DMA transfer, optionally notifying the OS when done. Each I/O controller can buffer at least two TIMs for each MQCW 170. This allows additional I/O transfers to be "stacked up" at the controller behind a currently executing transfer, thus reducing the dead time between transfers.
During transfers, traffic from/to the I/O controller is distributed round-robin over the four paths to local routers 116. This minimizes interference with traffic on any one PE 101, and reduces the bandwidth requirement of the router-to-I/O-controller links, allowing them to be implemented with fewer wires. The OS can configure the I/O controller to skip any of these links for fault tolerance or performance reasons.
An I/O controller's network address is based on the address of any of its four neighboring PE's 101. An additional address bit specifies memory-mapped register space, which is split between routers 116 and I/O controller 118. This addressing scheme gives each I/O controller 118 four redundant network addresses, which allows the OS to dictate the PE 101 through which traffic to the I/O controller will be routed. Packets arriving at a router with the memory mapped register (MMR) bit set are either processed by the router 116 or sent to the local I/O controller 118, according to the register address included in the packet.
Before discussing the operation of the I/O controller, it is useful to review the functionality provided by the standard peripheral channel. In one embodiment, the peripheral channel is a ring-based interconnect that scales easily from a single, point-to-point connection to a ring with many nodes. Systems having peripheral channel interfaces can simply be connected together to form a ring, with no intermediate switches, allowing full connectivity between all nodes. In one embodiment, the peripheral channel is implemented as a pair of unidirectional, counter-rotating rings in order to provide redundancy and flexible reconfiguration. A basic diagram of one embodiment of a peripheral channel node is shown in FIG. 9. In this figure, the client can be considered to be the rest of system 100. Nodes are linked together to form a ring as shown in FIG. 10.
Peripheral channel clients communicate with each other by transmitting packets across the client port. Packets are comprised of some number of 4-byte symbols. Flow control between the client and the peripheral channel interface is performed on a symbol-by-symbol basis. The channel implements separate virtual channels for request and response packets in order to avoid deadlock.
The peripheral channel patent application defines an I/O protocol to be used by all peripheral channel clients. The protocol provides two basic capabilities: peer-to-peer messaging and DMA. Peer-to-peer messages allow short (up to 32 words), unsolicited data exchanges with no target buffer reservations. DMA allows one client to directly read or write arbitrary blocks of data in another client's memory.
The peripheral channel packet includes a 16-byte header containing peripheral channel nodeIDs for the target and source, a packet command, a sequence number, special packet control information, flow information used only by the channel, and a client address. A data payload of 1 to 32 64-bit words may optionally be included. Peripheral channel packet types are differentiated by their command values. The MsgPkt is used for peer-to-peer messages. Longer messages can be implemented either by breaking them up into multiple MsgPkts, which then must be reassembled, or by pre-arranging buffer locations and using DMA operations.
A device on a peripheral channel ring may read from or write to the memory in another device on the peripheral channel ring using DMA transfers. DMA is performed through ReadBlk and WriteBlk operations. ReadBlk operations allow a DMA master to read data directly from a DMA slave's memory without OS intervention. The ReadBlkInit is required to pre-negotiate transfer speed and because certain clients require knowledge of the whole transfer before the individual read operations occur.
After receiving the ReadBlkInitResp, the DMA master performs a series of Reads, receiving the data in ReadResps. When all ReadResps have returned, the master signals completion via a ReadBlkDone, and the slave may clear any state it might have associated with the transfer. Some additional processing and/or notification will likely take place at this point. For example, if an external device were doing a ReadBlk in response to an OS generated I/O request, it may now write the data out to a peripheral or network and then notify the OS via a peer-to-peer message.
WriteBlk operations are handled similarly to ReadBlk operations. The WriteBlkInit is used to negotiate an initial transfer speed and set up any necessary state in the slave. The master performs a series of Writes, and counts the returned WriteResps. A WriteResp indicates only that the Write was received, not necessarily that the data has been fully written into the slave's memory. When all WriteResps have been received, the master sends a WriteBlkDone. The slave sends the WriteBlkDoneResp to indicate that all previous Writes have completed locally.
Read and Write commands can operate on data sizes between 1 and 32 64-bit words. The data size is specified via a 5-bit subfield within the Command field of the packet. All packet addresses refer to aligned 64-bit quantities.
Memory-mapped register requests (MMR-- Read and MMR-- Write) are used for accessing peripheral channel status and configuring the peripheral channel. Client maintenance packets (MaintRead and MaintWrite) packets are used to perform maintenance on remote peripheral channel clients. Aside from a handful of predefined functions, the addresses and side effects of maintenance packets are client-specific.
The I/O controllers on MPP system 100 provide access to all peripheral channel functionality. Any PE 101 can send an peripheral channel message to a destination peripheral channel client. To send a message on an peripheral channel, the operating system (OS) first places the message in a memory 104 and then sends a transfer initiation message (TIM) to the outgoing-message-MQCW 170 of the desired I/O channel. The TIM contains a pointer to and length of the outgoing message. In one embodiment, microprocessor 101 of one of the PEs 101 stores an peripheral channel packet in local memory 104. Microprocessor 110 then stores message-send request parameters into a contiguous block of E-registers 126 (E-registers 126 serve as the source registers for a SEND command). In one embodiment, a logical PE number, a global address value and a packet length are loaded into E-registers 126. The logical PE number indicates the logical PE where the peripheral channel packet is stored. The global address value indicates the location of the peripheral channel packet in local memory 104 of that logical PE 101. The message is assumed to be stored stride one in a single PE's memory. The length field indicates the total number of 64-bit words in the packet. In one embodiment, the length must be between 2 and 34, inclusive, and represents the number of words in the message, including header. Microprocessor 110 then issues a SEND E-register command to the outgoing message queue register of one of the I/O controllers 118. The selected I/O controller 118 sends the peripheral channel packet to the destination client on the peripheral channel and then sends an acknowledge for the E-register SEND command back to the requesting PE 101.
In one embodiment, I/O controller 118 has an outgoing message queue that can store up to eight outgoing peripheral channel message-send requests in addition to the peripheral channel message-send request currently being processed. I/O controller 118 processes message-send request in the order received. If the outgoing message queue is full, I/O controller 118 sends a no-acknowledge for the E-register SEND command back to the requesting PE 101. This changes the E-register state code for the source E-registers 126 to the full-and-send-rejected (FULL-- SR) state. The requesting PE can then send the message-send request to another I/O controller 118.
The contents of the outgoing message are not modified, save for the packet's Source ID. Thus, the message sending facility can actually be used to send any type of peripheral channel packet. OS software could use this mechanism, for example, to issue peripheral channel memory-mapped register requests, or to send maintenance packets to other clients. The corresponding response packets are provided back to software via incoming messages.
Any PE 101 can receive an peripheral channel message packet from an peripheral channel client. On an incoming message, each I/O controller 118 maintains a window (contained in a single PE's memory) where it places the incoming MsgPkts. This window is specified in advance via PUTs to controller memory mapped registers by the OS.
Upon receipt of MsgPkt from the peripheral channel, controller 118 writes the contents of the packet's data payload into the next "slot" in the message window and advances its write pointer in the window by 32 words. Thus, each MsgPkt consumes 32 words of the message window, regardless of actual size. The only exception to this are zero-payload MsgPkts (which convey information only in the message header). No payload is stored for these messages.
In one embodiment, an I/O controller 118 receives a peripheral channel message packet from a peripheral channel client. The I/O controller 118 determines how many 64-bit words are in the message payload of the peripheral channel packet. If the packet length is one or more words, the I/O controller determines whether there is room in a reserved location of system 100 memory for storing peripheral channel message payloads. If there is room, I/O controller 118 stores the payload into local memory 104 of one of the PEs 101.
Once the PUT responses for the data payload have been received, I/O controller 118 sends an OS-designated PE a SEND packet containing the 16-byte header of the received packet and a pointer to the packet's payload in memory. The OS can then process the packet header and consume the packet payload as desired. In one embodiment, the header of the packet is forwarded to microprocessor 110 of a PE 101 (not necessarily the same PE 101 where the payload was stored) via a SEND E-register command. After receiving the header information, microprocessor 110 reads the message length, logical PE number, global address value and peripheral channel packet header out of its message queue. Microprocessor 110 uses this information to process the packet header and to locate the message-packet payload.
If the message window is full or has not been established, then I/O controller 118 sends an appropriate error message to the OS and blocks further MsgPkt input from the peripheral channel until the OS has responded.
Certain other incoming peripheral channel packets are also placed in the message window by I/O controller 118. These include corrupt packets (these packets have been delivered by the peripheral channel marked as corrupt and are therefore unreliable), peripheral channel MMR response packets, client maintenance response packets, and other packets that I/O controller 118 does not recognize.
A PE 101 can act as a DMA master or a DMA slave. To initiate a WriteBlk operation as DMA master, the OS sends a TIM to the WriteBlk MQCW of the desired I/O controller 118. The TIM contains a pointer to a WriteBlkInit packet and a set of transfer register values describing the distribution in memory of the data to be transferred out the peripheral channel.
The WriteBlkInit packet is sent over the peripheral channel to the DMA slave. It provides the slave with the transfer length, base address, and optional slave-specific information. If the slave is another system 100, for example, the WriteBlkInit must include the transfer register values for the slave PE 101 memory distribution.
The DMA slave returns a WriteBlkInitResp packet accepting or refusing the WriteBlk. If it is refused, I/O controller 118 sends an error message to the OS. If accepted, the WriteBlkInitResp includes a new slave base address, which is subsequently used by the I/O controller 118 mastering the transfer. The first peripheral channel Write packet includes this address, and the address in each subsequent peripheral channel Write packet is incremented by 32 words.
The transfer register values included in the TIM are stored in the I/O controller 118 and used to retrieve data for the outgoing transfer. The registers include the transfer length, stride, starting index, base address and mask.
I/O controller 118 issues a series of GET8s or GETV8s (the vector form is used for aligned, stride-one blocks that do not straddle PEs) to read the data from memory 104. The GET8 (GETV8) addresses are generated by centrifuging index 134 with mask 136 and adding base address 138 (which includes a base PE). After each GET8 (GETV8) the index is incremented by 1 (8) times the stride.
The data from GET responses is assembled into 32-word peripheral channel Write packets and sent to the DMA slave over the peripheral channel. A shorter Write packet is used at the beginning and/or end of the transfer for non-multiple-of-32 length transfers. The initial Write address is that returned from the salve in the WriteBlkInitResp, and successive Write addresses are incremented by 32 (or as appropriate for short packets). That is, all WriteBlk transfers appear as stride one over the peripheral channel from system 100's perspective.
Once I/O controller 118 has received WriteResp packets for each Write packet it sent, it sends the slave a WriteBlkDone packet. Upon receipt of the corresponding WriteBlkDoneResp packet, the I/O controller notifies the OS of transfer completion via a SEND packet, and is then free to process another outgoing DMA request. WriteBlk operations that do not complete for some reason must be timed out by the OS or outside entity; I/O controller 118 does not maintain a hardware timer.
ReadBlk DMA transfers are initiated in much the same way as WriteBlk transfers. The OS sends a TIM to the ReadBlk MQCW of the desired I/O controller 118. The TIM contains a pointer to a ReadBlkInit packet and a set of transfer register values describing the distribution in memory for the incoming data.
The ReadBlkInit packet is sent over the peripheral channel to the DMA slave. It provides the salve with the transfer length, base address, and optional slave-specific information.
The DMA slave returns a ReadBlkInitResp packet accepting or refusing the ReadBlk. If it is refused, I/O controller 118 sends an error message to the OS. If accepted, the ReadBlkInitResp includes a new slave base address, which is subsequently used by the I/O controller 118 mastering the transfer. The first peripheral channel Read packet includes this address, and the address in each subsequent peripheral channel Read packet is incremented by 32 words.
The transfer register values included in the TIM are stored in the I/O controller 118 and used to store data associated with the transfer into memory 104 as it arrives off the peripheral channel. The registers include the transfer length, stride, starting index, base address and mask.
I/O controller 118 sends a series of peripheral channel Read packets to the slave over the peripheral channel, receiving payload-bearing ReadResp packets in return. The first Read packet uses the slave base address returned in the ReadBlkInitResp and subsequent Read packets increment this address by 32. Non-multiple-of-32 transfers cause an initial and/or trailing short Read packet.
As ReadResp packets are received over the peripheral channel, I/O controller 118 stores the data into memory 104 using PUT8 or PUTV8 packets (as appropriate). The sequence numbers returned in the ReadResp packets are used to index into the transfer. The I/O controller multiplies the stride by the number of words into the transfer, adding that to the transfer's starting index, and then centrifuges the resulting index. The multiplication is necessary because the requested data may not be returned in sequential order. A full-length ReadResp packet is split into 32 PUT8 packets or 4 PUTV8 packets, the address for each of which is centrifuged separately.
Once the I/O controller has received PUT responses for all the data it wrote into memory 104, it sends the slave a ReadBlkDone packet and notifies the OS of transfer completion via a SEND packet. It is then free to process another ReadBlk DMA request from the OS. ReadBlk operations that do not complete for some reason must be timed out by the OS or outside entity.
The peripheral channel allows DMA masters to directly read and write memory of DMA slaves. The slave need only respond to incoming Read and Write packets, each of which carries its own address. Due to the centrifuged memory distribution, however, system 100 must keep state associated with each active DMA operation for which it is a slave. The state is used to index into the transfer and apply the correct centrifuge operation(s) to each incoming request packet.
System 100 maintains an implementation-defined number of register sets, used to hold state for incoming DMA transfers. When a ReadBlkInit or WriteBlkInit packet is received, a check is made to see if a register set is free. If no register set is free, the DMA operation is refused via the BlkInitResp. This should happen very infrequently, as a large number of register sets will be implemented.
Incoming ReadBlkInit and WriteBlkInit packets for system 100 include an auxiliary data block and contain the transfer length, starting index, stride, base PE, base offset and centrifuge mask. These values are saved in a free incoming transfer register set. The I/O controller then returns a new slave base address to the DMA master in the ReadBlkInitResp or WriteBlkInitResp. This address encodes the register set number in the high-order bits and is zeroed in the low-order bits.
Upon subsequent receipt of an peripheral channel Read or Write packet, the high order bits of the address are used to identify the appropriate incoming transfer register set, from which the starting index, stride, mask, base pe and base offset are extracted. I/O controller 118 then generates the local memory address by multiplying the Read or Write address by the stride, adding it to the starting index, centrifuging it using the mask and finally adding the resulting address to the base pe and offset.
The controller then performs the requested action, either reading data from memory or writing data to memory. A fill-sized (32 word) peripheral channel Read or Write packet is broken up into a collection of GET8, GETV8, PUT8 and/or PUTV8 packets. The vector forms are used for aligned, stride-one blocks of references that do not straddle PEs.
Upon receipt of all GET responses from memory, a ReadResp packet containing the requested data is returned to the DMA master. WriteResp packets are returned immediately, but a count of all outstanding PUTs is maintained for each incoming transfer register set.
Upon receipt of a peripheral channel ReadBlkDone packet, the associated incoming transfer register set is freed, and a WriteBlkDoneResp packet is returned to the DMA master. Upon receipt of a peripheral channel WriteBlkDone packet, I/O controller 118 waits for all outstanding PUTs associated with the corresponding transfer to complete and then responds to the peripheral channel DMA master with a WriteBlkDoneResp packet. The transfer register set is then freed.
In one embodiment, I/O controller 118 does not notify the OS upon completion of a slave DMA transfer. This is left to the DMA master, if it so chooses.
Outgoing maintenance traffic (initiated by the OS) is sent via the messaging facility. In one embodiment, I/O controller 118 also has the capability of responding to client maintenance traffic targeted at system 100 from another client on the peripheral channel.
There are four types of maintenance packets to which system 100 will respond: scan control, "construct-a-command", loopback testing and peripheral channel client MMRs. I/O controller 118 distinguishes between various maintenance functions via the address contained in the MaintRead or MaintWrite packets.
Scan control packets are accepted only at the scan master I/O controller 118. Scan operations are performed by a series of MaintWrite packets to the proper scan control address. The results of the boundary scan are placed into a memory-mapped buffer on the I/O controller and can be accessed by MaintRead packets to the appropriate address.
"Construct-a-command"s allow an outside agent to create arbitrary internal packets. The packet is passed, in its entirety, in the payload section of a MaintWrite packet addressed to the construct-a-command MMR address. Any response to the constructed command is returned over the peripheral channel in a MaintWriteResp packet.
The construct-a-command feature is used, for example, to create necessary SPUTs and SGETs while booting system 100 over the peripheral channel. The peripheral channel prevents any node without ring master permissions from sending client maintenance packets.
In one embodiment, I/O controller 118 include loopback testing features which can be used to test parts of the I/O controller or other external systems.
There are a handful of client MMRs defined by the peripheral channel, such as a WHOAMI register that can be used by the peripheral channel master to determine what clients are attached to a given peripheral channel. The OS can access these requests as needed.
Although the present invention has been described with reference to the preferred embodiments, those skilled in the art will recognize that changes may be made in form and detail without departing from the spirit and scope of the invention.
|Cited Patent||Filing date||Publication date||Applicant||Title|
|US4330858 *||29 Jun 1979||18 May 1982||International Business Machines Corporation||Time domain supervisory channel for data terminal equipments|
|US4630259 *||14 Nov 1984||16 Dec 1986||At&T Bell Laboratories||Lockup detection and recovery in a packet switching network|
|US4771391 *||21 Jul 1986||13 Sep 1988||International Business Machines Corporation||Adaptive packet length traffic control in a local area network|
|US4868818 *||29 Oct 1987||19 Sep 1989||The United States Of America As Represented By The Administrator Of The National Aeronautics And Space Administration||Fault tolerant hypercube computer system architecture|
|US4933933 *||19 Dec 1986||12 Jun 1990||The California Institute Of Technology||Torus routing chip|
|US4965793 *||3 Feb 1989||23 Oct 1990||Digital Equipment Corporation||Method and apparatus for interfacing a system control unit for a multi-processor|
|US4974143 *||5 Apr 1990||27 Nov 1990||Kabushiki Kaisha Toshiba||Information processing apparatus wherein address path is used for continuous data transfer|
|US4980852 *||29 Dec 1987||25 Dec 1990||International Business Machines Corporation||Non-locking queueing mechanism for enabling a receiver device to read from a queue without access synchronization with a sending device|
|US4987537 *||31 May 1988||22 Jan 1991||Nec Corporation||Computer capable of accessing a memory by supplying an address having a length shorter than that of a required address for the memory|
|US4995056 *||13 Jan 1989||19 Feb 1991||International Business Machines Corporation||System and method for data communications|
|US5008882 *||17 Aug 1987||16 Apr 1991||California Institute Of Technology||Method and apparatus for eliminating unsuccessful tries in a search tree|
|US5027330 *||30 Dec 1988||25 Jun 1991||At&T Bell Laboratories||FIFO memory arrangement including a memory location fill indication|
|US5031211 *||1 Feb 1990||9 Jul 1991||Hitachi, Ltd.||Communication circuit switching or parallel operation system|
|US5036459 *||9 Mar 1989||30 Jul 1991||U.S. Philips Corporation||Multi-processor computer system with distributed memory and an interprocessor communication mechanism, and method for operating such mechanism|
|US5068784 *||20 Jul 1989||26 Nov 1991||Oki Electric Industry Co., Ltd.||Method and system for monitoring the number of available buffers|
|US5105424 *||2 Jun 1988||14 Apr 1992||California Institute Of Technology||Inter-computer message routing system with each computer having separate routinng automata for each dimension of the network|
|US5157692 *||20 Mar 1990||20 Oct 1992||Fujitsu Limited||System for controlling communication between parallel computers|
|US5161156 *||2 Feb 1990||3 Nov 1992||International Business Machines Corporation||Multiprocessing packet switching connection system having provision for error correction and recovery|
|US5170482 *||13 Feb 1991||8 Dec 1992||Regents Of The University Of Minnesota||Improved hypercube topology for multiprocessor computer systems|
|US5175733 *||27 Dec 1990||29 Dec 1992||Intel Corporation||Adaptive message routing for multi-dimensional networks|
|US5195100 *||2 Mar 1990||16 Mar 1993||Micro Technology, Inc.||Non-volatile memory storage of write operation identifier in data sotrage device|
|US5218601 *||20 Dec 1990||8 Jun 1993||Fujitsu Limited||Method for searching for alternate path in communication network|
|US5218676 *||8 Jan 1990||8 Jun 1993||The University Of Rochester||Dynamic routing system for a multinode communications network|
|US5233618 *||2 Mar 1990||3 Aug 1993||Micro Technology, Inc.||Data correcting applicable to redundant arrays of independent disks|
|US5239545 *||5 Nov 1990||24 Aug 1993||Motorola, Inc.||Channel access control in a communication system|
|US5274799 *||4 Jan 1991||28 Dec 1993||Array Technology Corporation||Storage device array architecture with copyback cache|
|US5276899 *||10 Aug 1990||4 Jan 1994||Teredata Corporation||Multi processor sorting network for sorting while transmitting concurrently presented messages by message content to deliver a highest priority message|
|US5280474 *||5 Jan 1990||18 Jan 1994||Maspar Computer Corporation||Scalable processor to processor and processor-to-I/O interconnection network and method for parallel processing arrays|
|US5303244 *||1 Mar 1991||12 Apr 1994||Teradata||Fault tolerant disk drive matrix|
|US5313628 *||30 Dec 1991||17 May 1994||International Business Machines Corporation||Component replacement control for fault-tolerant data processing system|
|US5313645 *||13 May 1991||17 May 1994||International Business Machines Corporation||Method for interconnecting and system of interconnected processing elements by controlling network density|
|US5331631 *||16 Mar 1993||19 Jul 1994||At&T Bell Laboratories||N+K sparing in a telecommunications switching environment|
|US5333279 *||1 Jun 1992||26 Jul 1994||Intel Corporation||Self-timed mesh routing chip with data broadcasting|
|US5341504 *||1 Mar 1990||23 Aug 1994||Hitachi, Ltd.||Multi-dimensional structured computer system|
|US5345565 *||13 Mar 1991||6 Sep 1994||Ncr Corporation||Multiple configuration data path architecture for a disk array controller|
|US5347450 *||19 Aug 1993||13 Sep 1994||Intel Corporation||Message routing in a multiprocessor computer system|
|US5353283 *||28 May 1993||4 Oct 1994||Bell Communications Research, Inc.||General internet method for routing packets in a communications network|
|US5365228 *||21 Aug 1991||15 Nov 1994||International Business Machines Corporation||SYNC-NET- a barrier synchronization apparatus for multi-stage networks|
|US5394528 *||2 Sep 1992||28 Feb 1995||Mitsubishi Denki Kabushiki Kaisha||Data processor with bus-sizing function|
|US5402428 *||19 Dec 1990||28 Mar 1995||Hitachi, Ltd.||Array disk subsystem|
|US5412782 *||2 Jul 1992||2 May 1995||3Com Corporation||Programmed I/O ethernet adapter with early interrupts for accelerating data transfer|
|US5434995 *||10 Dec 1993||18 Jul 1995||Cray Research, Inc.||Barrier synchronization for distributed memory massively parallel processing systems|
|US5440547 *||5 Jan 1994||8 Aug 1995||Kabushiki Kaisha Toshiba||Data-transfer routing management for packet-oriented digital communication system including ATM networks|
|US5452444 *||17 Feb 1995||19 Sep 1995||Data General Corporation||Data processing system using fligh availability disk arrays for handling power failure conditions during operation of the system|
|US5499377 *||3 May 1993||12 Mar 1996||Designed Enclosures, Inc.||Multi-computer access switching system|
|US5513192 *||28 Aug 1992||30 Apr 1996||Sun Microsystems, Inc.||Fault tolerant disk drive system with error detection and correction|
|US5517497 *||21 Mar 1995||14 May 1996||International Business Machines Corporation||Connectionless ATM data services|
|US5519844 *||21 Mar 1994||21 May 1996||Emc Corporation||Logical partitioning of a redundant array storage system|
|US5522031 *||29 Jun 1993||28 May 1996||Digital Equipment Corporation||Method and apparatus for the on-line restoration of a disk in a RAID-4 or RAID-5 array with concurrent access by applications|
|US5530948 *||30 Dec 1993||25 Jun 1996||International Business Machines Corporation||System and method for command queuing on raid levels 4 and 5 parity drives|
|US5546549 *||1 Jun 1994||13 Aug 1996||International Business Machines Corporation||Multi-path channel (MPC) interface with user transparent, unbalanced, dynamically alterable computer input/output channels|
|US5548639 *||22 Oct 1992||20 Aug 1996||Fujitsu Limited||Distributed control of telecommunication network for setting up an alternative communication path|
|US5555524 *||13 Feb 1995||10 Sep 1996||Standard Microsystems Corporation||Semi-synchronous dual port FIFO|
|US5555542 *||11 Jan 1996||10 Sep 1996||Fujitsu Limited||Packet directional path identifier transfer system|
|US5566321 *||13 Dec 1993||15 Oct 1996||Cray Research, Inc.||Method of managing distributed memory within a massively parallel processing system|
|US5574849 *||7 Jun 1995||12 Nov 1996||Tandem Computers Incorporated||Synchronized data transmission between elements of a processing system|
|US5581705 *||13 Dec 1993||3 Dec 1996||Cray Research, Inc.||Messaging facility with hardware tail pointer and software implemented head pointer message queue for distributed memory massively parallel processing system|
|US5627986 *||8 Dec 1994||6 May 1997||Rockwell International Corporation||Device and method for selecting and addressing extended memory addresses|
|USRE28577 *||21 Nov 1973||21 Oct 1975||Channel reallocation system and method|
|EP0353819A2 *||27 Jul 1989||7 Feb 1990||Philips Electronics N.V.||Method and apparatus for synchronizing parallel processors using a fuzzy barrier|
|EP0460599B1 *||4 Jun 1991||10 Feb 1999||TM Patents L.P.||Massively parallel processor including queue-based message delivery system|
|EP0473452A2 *||30 Aug 1991||4 Mar 1992||Ncr Corporation||Work station having multiprocessing capability|
|EP0475282A2 *||5 Sep 1991||18 Mar 1992||Hitachi, Ltd.||Synchronous method and apparatus for processors|
|EP0479520A2 *||30 Sep 1991||8 Apr 1992||International Business Machines Corporation||Network communication apparatus|
|EP0501524A2 *||29 May 1984||2 Sep 1992||W. Daniel Hillis||Parallel processor|
|EP0570729A2 *||27 Apr 1993||24 Nov 1993||International Business Machines Corporation||Apap I/O programmable router|
|WO1987001750A1 *||16 Sep 1986||26 Mar 1987||Skandinova Byggsystem Ab||A building structure and a method for producing the same|
|WO1988001341A1 *||18 Aug 1987||25 Feb 1988||Gerhard Haubenwallner||Internal combustion engine|
|WO1988008652A1 *||26 Apr 1988||3 Nov 1988||Thinking Machines Corp||Method and apparatus for routing message packets|
|WO1995016236A1 *||7 Dec 1994||15 Jun 1995||Cray Research Inc||Barrier synchronization for distributed memory massively parallel processing systems|
|1||"Deadlock-Free Routing Schemes on Multistage Interconnection Networks", IBM Technical Disclosure Bulletin, 35, pp. 232-233, (Dec., 1992).|
|2||"IEEE Standard for Scalable Coherent Interface (SCI)", IEEE Std 1596-1992, pp. 1-248 (Mar., 1992).|
|3||"Message Routing Systems for Transputer-Based Multicomputers", IEEE Micro, Jun. 13, 1993, No. 3, Los Alamitos, CA.|
|4||Adve, V.S., et al., "Performance Analysis of Mesh Interconnection Networks with Deterministic Routing", Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems, pp. 225-246, (Mar., 1994).|
|5||*||Adve, V.S., et al., Performance Analysis of Mesh Interconnection Networks with Deterministic Routing , Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems , pp. 225 246, (Mar., 1994).|
|6||Bolding, K., "Non-Uniformities Introduced by Virtual Channel Deadlock Prevention", Technical Report 92-07-07, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, FR-35 University of Washington; Seattle, WA 98195, (Jul. 21, 1992).|
|7||*||Bolding, K., Non Uniformities Introduced by Virtual Channel Deadlock Prevention , Technical Report 92 07 07, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, FR 35 University of Washington; Seattle, WA 98195 , (Jul. 21, 1992).|
|8||Bolla, F.R., "A Neural Strategy for Optimal Multiplexing of Circuit-And Packet-Switched Traffic", Department of Communications, Computer and Systems Science (DIST), University of Genoa, pp. 1324-1330.|
|9||*||Bolla, F.R., A Neural Strategy for Optimal Multiplexing of Circuit And Packet Switched Traffic , Department of Communications, Computer and Systems Science (DIST), University of Genoa , pp. 1324 1330.|
|10||Boura, Y.M., et al., "Efficient Fully Adaptive Wormhole Routing in n-dimensional Meshes", IEEE, pp. 589-596, (Jun. 21, 1994).|
|11||*||Boura, Y.M., et al., Efficient Fully Adaptive Wormhole Routing in n dimensional Meshes , IEEE , pp. 589 596, (Jun. 21, 1994).|
|12||Bundy, A., et al., "Turning Eureka Steps into Calculations in Automatic Program", UK IT, (IEE Conf. Pub. 316), pp. 221-226, (1991).|
|13||*||Bundy, A., et al., Turning Eureka Steps into Calculations in Automatic Program , UK IT, (IEE Conf. Pub. 316), pp. 221 226, (1991).|
|14||Carlile, B.R., "Algorithms and Design: The CRAP APP Shared-Memory System", Compcon Spring '93, San Francisco, CA, pp. 312-320, (Feb. 22, 1993).|
|15||*||Carlile, B.R., Algorithms and Design: The CRAP APP Shared Memory System , Compcon Spring 93, San Francisco, CA , pp. 312 320, (Feb. 22, 1993).|
|16||Chapman, B., et al., "Programming in Vienna Fortran", Dept. of Statistics and Computer Science, pp. 121-160.|
|17||*||Chapman, B., et al., Programming in Vienna Fortran , Dept. of Statistics and Computer Science , pp. 121 160.|
|18||Chien & J.H. Kim, A.A., "Planar-Adaptive Routing: Low-Cost Adaptive Networks for Multiprocessors", Pro. 19th International Symposium on Computer Architecture, pp. 268-277, (May, 1992).|
|19||*||Chien & J.H. Kim, A.A., Planar Adaptive Routing: Low Cost Adaptive Networks for Multiprocessors , Pro. 19th International Symposium on Computer Architecture , pp. 268 277, (May, 1992).|
|20||Dally, W., "Performance Analysis of k-ary n-cube Interconnection Networks", IEEE Transactions on Computers, vol. 39, No. 6, pp. 775-785, (Jun., 1990).|
|21||Dally, W., et al., "Deadlock-Free Message Routing in Multiprocessor Interconnection Networks", IEEE Transactions on Computer, C-36, pp. 547-553, (May, 1987).|
|22||*||Dally, W., et al., Deadlock Free Message Routing in Multiprocessor Interconnection Networks , IEEE Transactions on Computer, C 36 , pp. 547 553, (May, 1987).|
|23||*||Dally, W., Performance Analysis of k ary n cube Interconnection Networks , IEEE Transactions on Computers , vol. 39, No. 6, pp. 775 785, (Jun., 1990).|
|24||Dally, W.J., "Virtual Channel Flow Control", Pro. 17th International Sympsoium on Computer Architecture, pp. 60-68, (May, 1990).|
|25||Dally, W.J., et al., "Deadlock-Free Adaptive Routing in Multicomputer Networks Using Virtual Channels", I.E.E.E. Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems, vol. 4, No. 4, pp. 466-475, (Apr., 1993).|
|26||*||Dally, W.J., et al., Deadlock Free Adaptive Routing in Multicomputer Networks Using Virtual Channels , I.E.E.E. Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems , vol. 4, No. 4, pp. 466 475, (Apr., 1993).|
|27||*||Dally, W.J., Virtual Channel Flow Control , Pro. 17th International Sympsoium on Computer Architecture , pp. 60 68, (May, 1990).|
|28||*||Deadlock Free Routing Schemes on Multistage Interconnection Networks , IBM Technical Disclosure Bulletin , 35, pp. 232 233, (Dec., 1992).|
|29||Debenedictis, E., et al., "Extending Unix for Scalable Computing", IEEE, pp. 43-53, (Nov., 1993).|
|30||*||Debenedictis, E., et al., Extending Unix for Scalable Computing , IEEE , pp. 43 53, (Nov., 1993).|
|31||Duato, J., "A New Theory of Deadlock-Free Adaptive Routing in Wormhole Networks", I.E.E.E. Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems, vol. 4, No. 12, pp. 1320-1331 (Dec., 1993).|
|32||*||Duato, J., A New Theory of Deadlock Free Adaptive Routing in Wormhole Networks , I.E.E.E. Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems , vol. 4, No. 12, pp. 1320 1331 (Dec., 1993).|
|33||Gallager, R., "Scale Factors for Distributed Routing Algorithms", NTC '77 Conference Record 2, pp. 2-1 through 2-5 (1978).|
|34||*||Gallager, R., Scale Factors for Distributed Routing Algorithms , NTC 77 Conference Record 2 , pp. 2 1 through 2 5 (1978).|
|35||Glass, C.J., et al., "The Turn Model for Adaptive Routing", Pro. 19th International Symposium on Computer architecture, pp. 278-287, (May, 1992).|
|36||*||Glass, C.J., et al., The Turn Model for Adaptive Routing , Pro. 19th International Symposium on Computer architecture , pp. 278 287, (May, 1992).|
|37||Gravano, L., et al., "Adaptive Deadlock-and Livelock-Free Routing with all Minimal Paths in Torus Networks", IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems, vol. 5, No. 12, pp. 1233-1251, (Dec., 1994).|
|38||*||Gravano, L., et al., Adaptive Deadlock and Livelock Free Routing with all Minimal Paths in Torus Networks , IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems , vol. 5, No. 12, pp. 1233 1251, (Dec., 1994).|
|39||Gupta, R., et al., "High speed Synchronization of Processors Using Fuzzy Barriers", International Journal of Parallel Programming 19 (1990) Feb., No. 1, New York, US pp. 53-73.|
|40||*||Gupta, R., et al., High speed Synchronization of Processors Using Fuzzy Barriers , International Journal of Parallel Programming 19 (1990) Feb., No. 1, New York, US pp. 53 73.|
|41||Gustavson, D.B., "The Scalable Coherent Interface and related Standards Projects", IEEE Micro, pp. 10-22, (Feb., 1992).|
|42||*||Gustavson, D.B., The Scalable Coherent Interface and related Standards Projects , IEEE Micro , pp. 10 22, (Feb., 1992).|
|43||*||IEEE Standard for Scalable Coherent Interface (SCI) , IEEE Std 1596 1992 , pp. 1 248 (Mar., 1992).|
|44||Ishihata, H., et al, "Architecture of Highly Parallel AP1000 Computer", Scripta Technica, Inc., Systems and Computers in Japan 24, No. 7, pp. 69-76, (1993).|
|45||*||Ishihata, H., et al, Architecture of Highly Parallel AP1000 Computer , Scripta Technica, Inc. , Systems and Computers in Japan 24, No. 7, pp. 69 76, (1993).|
|46||Jesshope, C. r., M.Y., "High Performance Communications in Processor Networks", Communications in Processor Networks, Proc. 16th International Symposium on Computer Architecture pp. 150-157, (May, 1989).|
|47||*||Jesshope, C. r., M.Y., High Performance Communications in Processor Networks , Communications in Processor Networks, Proc. 16th International Symposium on Computer Architecture pp. 150 157, (May, 1989).|
|48||Kirkpatrick, S, G.V., "Optimization by Stimulated Annealing", Science, pp. 671-680, vol. 220, No. 4598, (May, 1983).|
|49||*||Kirkpatrick, S, G.V., Optimization by Stimulated Annealing , Science , pp. 671 680, vol. 220, No. 4598, (May, 1983).|
|50||Linder, D.H., et al., "An Adaptive and Fault Tolerant Wormhole Routing Strategy for k-ary n-cubes", I.E.E.E. Trans. on Computers, vol. 40, No. 1, pp. 2-12, (Jan., 1991).|
|51||*||Linder, D.H., et al., An Adaptive and Fault Tolerant Wormhole Routing Strategy for k ary n cubes , I.E.E.E. Trans. on Computers , vol. 40, No. 1, pp. 2 12, (Jan., 1991).|
|52||Lui, Z., et al., "Grouping Virtual Channels for Deadlock-Free Adaptive Wormhole Routing", PARLE '93 Parallel Parallel Architectures and Languages Europe, 5th International PARLE Conference, Munich, Germany, pp. 255-265, (Jun. 14-17, 1993).|
|53||*||Lui, Z., et al., Grouping Virtual Channels for Deadlock Free Adaptive Wormhole Routing , PARLE 93 Parallel Parallel Architectures and Languages Europe, 5th International PARLE Conference, Munich, Germany , pp. 255 265, (Jun. 14 17, 1993).|
|54||MacDonald, T., et al., "Addressing in Cray Research's MPP Fortran", Third Workshop on Compilers for Parallel Computers, pp. 161-172 (Jul. 7, 1992).|
|55||*||MacDonald, T., et al., Addressing in Cray Research s MPP Fortran , Third Workshop on Compilers for Parallel Computers , pp. 161 172 (Jul. 7, 1992).|
|56||*||Message Routing Systems for Transputer Based Multicomputers , IEEE Micro , Jun. 13, 1993, No. 3, Los Alamitos, CA.|
|57||Nuth, P., et al., "The J-Machine Network", IEEE, pp. 420-423, (1992).|
|58||*||Nuth, P., et al., The J Machine Network , IEEE , pp. 420 423, (1992).|
|59||*||O Keefe, M.T., et al., Static Barrier MIMD: Architecture and Performance Analysis , Journal of Parallel and Distributed Computing No. 2. , pp. 126 132, (Mar. 25, 1995).|
|60||O'Keefe, M.T., et al., "Static Barrier MIMD: Architecture and Performance Analysis", Journal of Parallel and Distributed Computing No. 2., pp. 126-132, (Mar. 25, 1995).|
|61||Patterson, D.A., et al., "A Case for Redundant Arrays of Inexpensive Disks (RAID)", University of California at Berkeley, Report No. UCB/CSD 87/391, (Dec., 1987).|
|62||*||Patterson, D.A., et al., A Case for Redundant Arrays of Inexpensive Disks (RAID) , University of California at Berkeley, Report No. UCB/CSD 87/391 , (Dec., 1987).|
|63||Scott, S., "The SCX Channel: A New, Supercomputer-Class System Interconnect", HOT Interconnects III, Abstract, pp. 1-11, (Aug. 1-11, 1995).|
|64||*||Scott, S., The SCX Channel: A New, Supercomputer Class System Interconnect , HOT Interconnects III , Abstract, pp. 1 11, (Aug. 1 11, 1995).|
|65||Shumway, M., "Deadlock-Free Packet Networks", Transputer Research and Applications 2, NATUG-2 Proceedings of the Second Conference of the North American Transputer Users Group, pp. 140-177, (Oct. 18-19, 1989).|
|66||*||Shumway, M., Deadlock Free Packet Networks , Transputer Research and Applications 2, NATUG 2 Proceedings of the Second Conference of the North American Transputer Users Group , pp. 140 177, (Oct. 18 19, 1989).|
|67||Synder, L., "Introduction to the Configurable, Highly Parallel Computer", pp. 47-56, (Jan., 1982).|
|68||*||Synder, L., Introduction to the Configurable, Highly Parallel Computer , pp. 47 56, (Jan., 1982).|
|69||Talia, D., "Message-Routing Systems for Transputer-Based Multicomputers", IEEE Micro, vol. 13, No. 3, New York US, pp. 62-72, (Jun., 1993).|
|70||*||Talia, D., Message Routing Systems for Transputer Based Multicomputers , IEEE Micro , vol. 13, No. 3, New York US, pp. 62 72, (Jun., 1993).|
|71||Wang, W., et al., "Trunk Congestion Control in Heterogeneous Circuit Switched Networks", IEEE, vol. 40, No. 7, pp. 1156-1161, (Jul., 1992).|
|72||*||Wang, W., et al., Trunk Congestion Control in Heterogeneous Circuit Switched Networks , IEEE , vol. 40, No. 7, pp. 1156 1161, (Jul., 1992).|
|73||Wu, M., et al., "DO and FORALL: Temporal and Spacial Control Structures", Proceedings, Third Workshop on Compilers for Parallel Computers, ACPC/TR, (Jul., 1992).|
|74||*||Wu, M., et al., DO and FORALL: Temporal and Spacial Control Structures , Proceedings, Third Workshop on Compilers for Parallel Computers, ACPC/TR , (Jul., 1992).|
|75||Yang, C.S., et al., "Performance Evaluation of Multicast Wormhole Routing in 2D Torus Multicomputers", IEEE, pp. 173-178, (1992).|
|76||*||Yang, C.S., et al., Performance Evaluation of Multicast Wormhole Routing in 2D Torus Multicomputers , IEEE , pp. 173 178, (1992).|
|77||Yantchev, J., et al., "Adaptive, low latency, deadlock-free packet routing for networks of processors", IEE Proceedings, vol. 136, Pt.E., No. 3, pp.136, 178-186 (May, 1989).|
|78||*||Yantchev, J., et al., Adaptive, low latency, deadlock free packet routing for networks of processors , IEE Proceedings , vol. 136, Pt.E., No. 3, pp.136, 178 186 (May, 1989).|
|Citing Patent||Filing date||Publication date||Applicant||Title|
|US6078402 *||24 Sep 1997||20 Jun 2000||Hewlett-Packard Company||Accessory based resource offset mechanism for a PCI bus in a printer|
|US6081906 *||21 Nov 1997||27 Jun 2000||Fuji Xerox Co., Ltd.||Multi-thread processing with queuing and recovery|
|US6112983 *||17 Apr 1998||5 Sep 2000||Diebold, Incorporated||Enhanced network monitor system for automated banking machines|
|US6167428 *||27 May 1999||26 Dec 2000||Ellis; Frampton E.||Personal computer microprocessor firewalls for internet distributed processing|
|US6167492 *||23 Dec 1998||26 Dec 2000||Advanced Micro Devices, Inc.||Circuit and method for maintaining order of memory access requests initiated by devices coupled to a multiprocessor system|
|US6292826 *||28 Sep 1998||18 Sep 2001||Alcatel Internetworking, Inc.||Shadow arrays for distributed memory multiprocessor architecture|
|US6385705||30 Oct 2000||7 May 2002||Advanced Micro Devices, Inc.||Circuit and method for maintaining order of memory access requests initiated by devices in a multiprocessor system|
|US6405327 *||19 Aug 1998||11 Jun 2002||Unisys Corporation||Apparatus for and method of automatic monitoring of computer performance|
|US6415364 *||31 Dec 1997||2 Jul 2002||Unisys Corporation||High-speed memory storage unit for a multiprocessor system having integrated directory and data storage subsystems|
|US6484236 *||6 Nov 2001||19 Nov 2002||Hitachi, Ltd.||Disk array controller with connection path formed on connection request queue basis|
|US6487643||29 Sep 2000||26 Nov 2002||Intel Corporation||Method and apparatus for preventing starvation in a multi-node architecture|
|US6523088||5 Jul 2002||18 Feb 2003||Hitachi, Ltd.||Disk array controller with connection path formed on connection request queue basis|
|US6629229 *||24 May 2001||30 Sep 2003||Lsi Logic Corporation||Message index descriptor|
|US6708228 *||9 Nov 2000||16 Mar 2004||Microsoft Corporation||Automatic computer input device association|
|US6711558 *||7 Apr 2000||23 Mar 2004||Washington University||Associative database scanning and information retrieval|
|US6721918||29 Dec 2000||13 Apr 2004||Intel Corporation||Method and apparatus for encoding a bus to minimize simultaneous switching outputs effect|
|US6725250||17 Dec 1998||20 Apr 2004||Ellis, Iii Frampton E.||Global network computers|
|US6732141||26 Nov 1997||4 May 2004||Frampton Erroll Ellis||Commercial distributed processing by personal computers over the internet|
|US6751698||29 Sep 1999||15 Jun 2004||Silicon Graphics, Inc.||Multiprocessor node controller circuit and method|
|US6766482||31 Oct 2001||20 Jul 2004||Extreme Networks||Ethernet automatic protection switching|
|US6772298||20 Dec 2000||3 Aug 2004||Intel Corporation||Method and apparatus for invalidating a cache line without data return in a multi-node architecture|
|US6791412||28 Dec 2000||14 Sep 2004||Intel Corporation||Differential amplifier output stage|
|US6826619||21 Aug 2000||30 Nov 2004||Intel Corporation||Method and apparatus for preventing starvation in a multi-node architecture|
|US6829652 *||7 Sep 1999||7 Dec 2004||Intel Corporation||I2O ISM implementation for a san based storage subsystem|
|US6862647 *||29 Jan 2002||1 Mar 2005||Advanced Micro Devices, Inc.||System and method for analyzing bus transactions|
|US6971098||27 Jun 2001||29 Nov 2005||Intel Corporation||Method and apparatus for managing transaction requests in a multi-node architecture|
|US6985964 *||22 Dec 1999||10 Jan 2006||Cisco Technology, Inc.||Network processor system including a central processor and at least one peripheral processor|
|US6986020 *||21 Sep 2004||10 Jan 2006||Pts Corporation||Methods and apparatus for providing bit-reversal and multicast functions utilizing DMA controller|
|US7024449||20 May 1999||4 Apr 2006||Ellis Iii Frampton E||Global network computers|
|US7035906||16 May 2000||25 Apr 2006||Ellis Iii Frampton E||Global network computers|
|US7047275||26 Sep 2000||16 May 2006||Ellis Frampton E||Internal firewall for a personal computer to deny access by a network to a user's secure portion|
|US7047372 *||15 Apr 2003||16 May 2006||Newisys, Inc.||Managing I/O accesses in multiprocessor systems|
|US7075937 *||19 May 1999||11 Jul 2006||Canon Kabushiki Kaisha||Method and device for sending data, method and device for receiving data|
|US7093023||21 May 2002||15 Aug 2006||Washington University||Methods, systems, and devices using reprogrammable hardware for high-speed processing of streaming data to find a redefinable pattern and respond thereto|
|US7103710||17 Oct 2002||5 Sep 2006||Hitachi, Ltd.||Disk array controller with connection path formed on connection request queue basis|
|US7117313 *||18 Mar 2004||3 Oct 2006||Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P.||Using local storage to handle multiple outstanding requests in a SCI system|
|US7139743||21 May 2002||21 Nov 2006||Washington University||Associative database scanning and information retrieval using FPGA devices|
|US7181437||24 Nov 2003||20 Feb 2007||Washington University||Associative database scanning and information retrieval|
|US7234029||28 Dec 2000||19 Jun 2007||Intel Corporation||Method and apparatus for reducing memory latency in a cache coherent multi-node architecture|
|US7373557||4 Apr 2003||13 May 2008||Unisys Corporation||Performance monitor for data processing systems|
|US7398368||1 Dec 2005||8 Jul 2008||Sony Computer Entertainment Inc.||Atomic operation involving processors with different memory transfer operation sizes|
|US7506020||24 Aug 2001||17 Mar 2009||Frampton E Ellis||Global network computers|
|US7509463 *||1 Dec 2005||24 Mar 2009||Sony Computer Entertainment, Inc.||Cell processor atomic compare and swap using dedicated synergistic processor element|
|US7552107||8 Jan 2007||23 Jun 2009||Washington University||Associative database scanning and information retrieval|
|US7602785||9 Feb 2005||13 Oct 2009||Washington University||Method and system for performing longest prefix matching for network address lookup using bloom filters|
|US7606854||20 Jun 2001||20 Oct 2009||Ellis Iii Frampton E||Internal hardware firewalls for microchips|
|US7634529 *||27 May 1998||15 Dec 2009||Ellis Iii Frampton E||Personal and server computers having microchips with multiple processing units and internal firewalls|
|US7636703||2 May 2006||22 Dec 2009||Exegy Incorporated||Method and apparatus for approximate pattern matching|
|US7660793||12 Nov 2007||9 Feb 2010||Exegy Incorporated||Method and system for high performance integration, processing and searching of structured and unstructured data using coprocessors|
|US7680790||31 Oct 2007||16 Mar 2010||Washington University||Method and apparatus for approximate matching of DNA sequences|
|US7702629||2 Dec 2005||20 Apr 2010||Exegy Incorporated||Method and device for high performance regular expression pattern matching|
|US7711844||15 Aug 2002||4 May 2010||Washington University Of St. Louis||TCP-splitter: reliable packet monitoring methods and apparatus for high speed networks|
|US7716330||19 Oct 2001||11 May 2010||Global Velocity, Inc.||System and method for controlling transmission of data packets over an information network|
|US7765338 *||9 Jul 2007||27 Jul 2010||Altera Corporation||Methods and apparatus for providing bit-reversal and multicast functions utilizing DMA controller|
|US7805756||17 Mar 2004||28 Sep 2010||Frampton E Ellis||Microchips with inner firewalls, faraday cages, and/or photovoltaic cells|
|US7814233||17 Sep 2003||12 Oct 2010||Ellis Frampton E||Computer and microprocessor control units that are inaccessible from the internet|
|US7840482||8 Jun 2007||23 Nov 2010||Exegy Incorporated||Method and system for high speed options pricing|
|US7860967||10 Jan 2006||28 Dec 2010||Cisco Technology, Inc.||Network processor system including a central processor and at least one peripheral processor|
|US7881321||28 Jul 2008||1 Feb 2011||Silicon Graphics International||Multiprocessor node controller circuit and method|
|US7908650||25 Jan 2006||15 Mar 2011||Ellis Iii Frampton E||Computer or microchip protected from the internet by internal hardware|
|US7921046||19 Jun 2007||5 Apr 2011||Exegy Incorporated||High speed processing of financial information using FPGA devices|
|US7926097||12 Apr 2011||Ellis Iii Frampton E||Computer or microchip protected from the internet by internal hardware|
|US7945528||10 Feb 2010||17 May 2011||Exegy Incorporated||Method and device for high performance regular expression pattern matching|
|US7949650||31 Oct 2007||24 May 2011||Washington University||Associative database scanning and information retrieval|
|US7953743||31 Oct 2007||31 May 2011||Washington University||Associative database scanning and information retrieval|
|US7954114||26 Jan 2006||31 May 2011||Exegy Incorporated||Firmware socket module for FPGA-based pipeline processing|
|US7970722||9 Nov 2009||28 Jun 2011||Aloft Media, Llc||System, method and computer program product for a collaborative decision platform|
|US7975080 *||21 Jun 2010||5 Jul 2011||Edwin Franklin Barry||Methods and apparatus for providing bit-reversal and multicast functions utilizing DMA controller|
|US7996625||30 Apr 2007||9 Aug 2011||Intel Corporation||Method and apparatus for reducing memory latency in a cache coherent multi-node architecture|
|US8005777||27 Jul 2010||23 Aug 2011||Aloft Media, Llc||System, method and computer program product for a collaborative decision platform|
|US8024521||13 Mar 2007||20 Sep 2011||Sony Computer Entertainment Inc.||Atomic operation on non-standard sized data using external cache|
|US8069102||20 Nov 2006||29 Nov 2011||Washington University||Method and apparatus for processing financial information at hardware speeds using FPGA devices|
|US8082372 *||23 May 2011||20 Dec 2011||Altera Corporation||Methods and apparatus for providing bit-reversal and multicast functions utilizing DMA controller|
|US8095508||21 May 2004||10 Jan 2012||Washington University||Intelligent data storage and processing using FPGA devices|
|US8122197||19 Aug 2009||21 Feb 2012||International Business Machines Corporation||Managing coherence via put/get windows|
|US8131697||31 Oct 2007||6 Mar 2012||Washington University||Method and apparatus for approximate matching where programmable logic is used to process data being written to a mass storage medium and process data being read from a mass storage medium|
|US8150945 *||23 Jun 2004||3 Apr 2012||Broadcom Corporation||Host arbitrated user interface resource sharing|
|US8156101||17 Dec 2009||10 Apr 2012||Exegy Incorporated||Method and system for high performance integration, processing and searching of structured and unstructured data using coprocessors|
|US8160988||27 Jul 2010||17 Apr 2012||Aloft Media, Llc||System, method and computer program product for a collaborative decision platform|
|US8161248||17 Apr 2012||International Business Machines Corporation||Simplifying and speeding the management of intra-node cache coherence|
|US8171235||28 Jan 2009||1 May 2012||Sony Computer Entertainment Inc.||Atomic compare and swap using dedicated processor|
|US8209373||3 Feb 2009||26 Jun 2012||Ellis Iii Frampton E||Computers or microchips with a hardware side protected by a primary internal hardware firewall and an unprotected hardware side connected to a network, and with multiple internal hardware compartments protected by multiple secondary inner hardware firewalls|
|US8225003||11 Jan 2006||17 Jul 2012||Ellis Iii Frampton E||Computers and microchips with a portion protected by an internal hardware firewall|
|US8244931 *||8 Aug 2011||14 Aug 2012||Altera Corporation||Methods and apparatus for providing bit-reversal and multicast functions utilizing DMA controller|
|US8291485||24 Jun 2010||16 Oct 2012||Ellis Iii Frampton E||Computers and microchips with a faraday cage, a side protected by an internal hardware firewall and an unprotected side connected to the internet for network operations, and with internal hardware compartments|
|US8312529||27 Oct 2011||13 Nov 2012||Ellis Frampton E||Global network computers|
|US8326819||12 Nov 2007||4 Dec 2012||Exegy Incorporated||Method and system for high performance data metatagging and data indexing using coprocessors|
|US8332924||30 Jun 2008||11 Dec 2012||Ellis Frampton E||Microchips with multiple internal hardware-based firewalls and dies|
|US8374986||15 May 2008||12 Feb 2013||Exegy Incorporated||Method and system for accelerated stream processing|
|US8407122||31 Mar 2011||26 Mar 2013||Exegy Incorporated||High speed processing of financial information using FPGA devices|
|US8458081||31 Mar 2011||4 Jun 2013||Exegy Incorporated||High speed processing of financial information using FPGA devices|
|US8478680||31 Mar 2011||2 Jul 2013||Exegy Incorporated||High speed processing of financial information using FPGA devices|
|US8516033||11 Jul 2011||20 Aug 2013||Frampton E. Ellis, III||Computers or microchips with a hardware side protected by a primary internal hardware firewall leaving an unprotected hardware side connected to a network, and with multiple internal hardware compartments protected by multiple secondary interior hardware firewalls|
|US8549024||2 Mar 2012||1 Oct 2013||Ip Reservoir, Llc||Method and apparatus for adjustable data matching|
|US8555370||24 Aug 2012||8 Oct 2013||Frampton E Ellis||Microchips with an internal hardware firewall|
|US8561164||1 Jul 2010||15 Oct 2013||Frampton E. Ellis, III||Computers and microchips with a side protected by an internal hardware firewall and an unprotected side connected to a network|
|US8595104||31 Mar 2011||26 Nov 2013||Ip Reservoir, Llc||High speed processing of financial information using FPGA devices|
|US8600856||31 Mar 2011||3 Dec 2013||Ip Reservoir, Llc||High speed processing of financial information using FPGA devices|
|US8601176 *||10 Jul 2012||3 Dec 2013||Altera Corporation||Methods and apparatus for providing bit-reversal and multicast functions utilizing DMA controller|
|US8620881||21 Jun 2011||31 Dec 2013||Ip Reservoir, Llc||Intelligent data storage and processing using FPGA devices|
|US8626624||31 Mar 2011||7 Jan 2014||Ip Reservoir, Llc||High speed processing of financial information using FPGA devices|
|US8627444||30 Aug 2012||7 Jan 2014||Frampton E. Ellis||Computers and microchips with a faraday cage, with a side protected by an internal hardware firewall and unprotected side connected to the internet for network operations, and with internal hardware compartments|
|US8655764||31 Mar 2011||18 Feb 2014||Ip Reservoir, Llc||High speed processing of financial information using FPGA devices|
|US8670246||24 Feb 2012||11 Mar 2014||Frampton E. Ellis||Computers including an undiced semiconductor wafer with Faraday Cages and internal flexibility sipes|
|US8677026||13 Jun 2012||18 Mar 2014||Frampton E. Ellis, III||Computers and microchips with a portion protected by an internal hardware firewalls|
|US8726303||31 Jan 2011||13 May 2014||Frampton E. Ellis, III||Microchips with an internal hardware firewall that by its location leaves unprotected microprocessors or processing units which performs processing with a network|
|US8732230||22 Sep 2011||20 May 2014||Frampton Erroll Ellis, Iii||Computers and microchips with a side protected by an internal hardware firewall and an unprotected side connected to a network|
|US8739195||28 Jan 2011||27 May 2014||Frampton E. Ellis, III||Microchips with an internal hardware firewall protected portion and a network portion with microprocessors which execute shared processing operations with the network|
|US8751452||6 Jan 2012||10 Jun 2014||Ip Reservoir, Llc||Intelligent data storage and processing using FPGA devices|
|US8762249||7 Jun 2011||24 Jun 2014||Ip Reservoir, Llc||Method and apparatus for high-speed processing of financial market depth data|
|US8768805||7 Jun 2011||1 Jul 2014||Ip Reservoir, Llc||Method and apparatus for high-speed processing of financial market depth data|
|US8768888||6 Jan 2012||1 Jul 2014||Ip Reservoir, Llc||Intelligent data storage and processing using FPGA devices|
|US8843408||26 Oct 2010||23 Sep 2014||Ip Reservoir, Llc||Method and system for high speed options pricing|
|US8848368||28 Jun 2013||30 Sep 2014||Frampton E. Ellis||Computer with at least one faraday cage and internal flexibility sipes|
|US8880501||9 Apr 2012||4 Nov 2014||Ip Reservoir, Llc||Method and system for high performance integration, processing and searching of structured and unstructured data using coprocessors|
|US8892627||3 Mar 2013||18 Nov 2014||Frampton E. Ellis||Computers or microchips with a primary internal hardware firewall and with multiple internal harware compartments protected by multiple secondary interior hardware firewalls|
|US8898768||15 Mar 2013||25 Nov 2014||Frampton E. Ellis||Computer or microchip with a secure control bus connecting a central controller to volatile RAM and the volatile RAM to a network-connected microprocessor|
|US9003510||17 Jul 2014||7 Apr 2015||Frampton E. Ellis||Computer or microchip with a secure system bios having a separate private network connection to a separate private network|
|US9009809||17 Jul 2014||14 Apr 2015||Frampton E. Ellis||Computer or microchip with a secure system BIOS and a secure control bus connecting a central controller to many network-connected microprocessors and volatile RAM|
|US9020928||27 Sep 2013||28 Apr 2015||Ip Reservoir, Llc||Method and apparatus for processing streaming data using programmable logic|
|US9021011||27 Nov 2013||28 Apr 2015||Frampton E. Ellis||Computer or microchip including a network portion with RAM memory erasable by a firewall-protected master controller|
|US9047243||5 Apr 2012||2 Jun 2015||Ip Reservoir, Llc||Method and apparatus for low latency data distribution|
|US9065851 *||6 Jan 2011||23 Jun 2015||Infoblox Inc.||Systems and methods for storing and retrieving data|
|US9137143 *||7 Nov 2011||15 Sep 2015||Intel Corporation||Progressive adaptive routing in a dragonfly processor interconnect network|
|US9164555||6 Sep 2012||20 Oct 2015||Beyond Blades Ltd.||3-dimensional multi-layered modular computer architecture|
|US9172676||10 Jul 2014||27 Oct 2015||Frampton E. Ellis||Computer or microchip with its system bios protected by one or more internal hardware firewalls|
|US9176775||26 Jun 2014||3 Nov 2015||Ip Reservoir, Llc||Intelligent data storage and processing using FPGA devices|
|US9182839||9 Aug 2012||10 Nov 2015||Broadcom Corporation||Resource controlled user interface resource management|
|US9183410||31 Mar 2014||10 Nov 2015||Frampton E. Ellis||Computer or microchip with an internal hardware firewall and a master controlling device|
|US9250971 *||20 Aug 2012||2 Feb 2016||Broadcom Corporation||Central system based user interface resource management|
|US20020059392 *||20 Jun 2001||16 May 2002||Ellis Frampton E.||Global network computers|
|US20020084848 *||28 Dec 2000||4 Jul 2002||Griffin Jed D.||Differential amplifier output stage|
|US20020087766 *||29 Dec 2000||4 Jul 2002||Akhilesh Kumar||Method and apparatus to implement a locked-bus transaction|
|US20020087775 *||29 Dec 2000||4 Jul 2002||Looi Lily P.||Apparatus and method for interrupt delivery|
|US20020087811 *||28 Dec 2000||4 Jul 2002||Manoj Khare||Method and apparatus for reducing memory latency in a cache coherent multi-node architecture|
|US20020087886 *||24 Aug 2001||4 Jul 2002||Ellis Frampton E.||Global network computers|
|US20030018630 *||21 May 2002||23 Jan 2003||Indeck Ronald S.||Associative database scanning and information retrieval using FPGA devices|
|US20030033478 *||17 Oct 2002||13 Feb 2003||Kazuhisa Fujimoto||Disk array controller with connection path formed on connection request queue basis|
|US20030131167 *||20 Dec 2001||10 Jul 2003||Rankin Linda J.||Node ID discovery|
|US20030177253 *||15 Aug 2002||18 Sep 2003||Schuehler David V.||TCP-splitter: reliable packet monitoring methods and apparatus for high speed networks|
|US20030221013 *||21 May 2002||27 Nov 2003||John Lockwood||Methods, systems, and devices using reprogrammable hardware for high-speed processing of streaming data to find a redefinable pattern and respond thereto|
|US20040049596 *||11 Aug 2003||11 Mar 2004||Schuehler David V.||Reliable packet monitoring methods and apparatus for high speed networks|
|US20040073603 *||17 Sep 2003||15 Apr 2004||Ellis Frampton E.||Global network computers for shared processing|
|US20040111392 *||24 Nov 2003||10 Jun 2004||Indeck Ronald S.||Associative database scanning and information retrieval|
|US20040177222 *||18 Mar 2004||9 Sep 2004||Bryan Hornung||Using local storage to handle multiple outstanding requests in a SCI system|
|US20040210693 *||15 Apr 2003||21 Oct 2004||Newisys, Inc.||Managing I/O accesses in multiprocessor systems|
|US20040215931 *||17 Mar 2004||28 Oct 2004||Ellis Frampton E.||Global network computers|
|US20050038936 *||21 Sep 2004||17 Feb 2005||Pts Corporation||Methods and apparatus for providing bit-reversal and multicast functions utilizing DMA controller|
|US20050065768 *||23 Jun 2004||24 Mar 2005||Jeyhan Karaoguz||Host arbitrated user interface resource sharing|
|US20050180095 *||15 Oct 2003||18 Aug 2005||Ellis Frampton E.||Global network computers|
|US20060053295 *||24 Aug 2005||9 Mar 2006||Bharath Madhusudan||Methods and systems for content detection in a reconfigurable hardware|
|US20060095497 *||4 Aug 2005||4 May 2006||Ellis Frampton E Iii||Global network computers|
|US20060117088 *||10 Jan 2006||1 Jun 2006||Petersen Brian A||Network processor system|
|US20060190565 *||25 Jan 2006||24 Aug 2006||Ellis Frampton E Iii||Global network computers|
|US20060294059 *||21 May 2004||28 Dec 2006||Washington University, A Corporation Of The State Of Missouri||Intelligent data storage and processing using fpga devices|
|US20070078837 *||20 Nov 2006||5 Apr 2007||Washington University||Method and Apparatus for Processing Financial Information at Hardware Speeds Using FPGA Devices|
|US20070118500 *||8 Jan 2007||24 May 2007||Washington University||Associative Database Scanning and Information Retrieval|
|US20070130140 *||2 Dec 2005||7 Jun 2007||Cytron Ron K||Method and device for high performance regular expression pattern matching|
|US20070143551 *||1 Dec 2005||21 Jun 2007||Sony Computer Entertainment Inc.||Cell processor atomic compare and swap using dedicated SPE|
|US20070204111 *||30 Apr 2007||30 Aug 2007||Manoj Khare||Method and apparatus for reducing memory latency in a cache coherent multi-node architecture|
|US20070260602 *||2 May 2006||8 Nov 2007||Exegy Incorporated||Method and Apparatus for Approximate Pattern Matching|
|US20070277036 *||21 May 2004||29 Nov 2007||Washington University, A Corporation Of The State Of Missouri||Intelligent data storage and processing using fpga devices|
|US20070294157 *||8 Jun 2007||20 Dec 2007||Exegy Incorporated||Method and System for High Speed Options Pricing|
|US20080016262 *||9 Jul 2007||17 Jan 2008||Altera Corporation||Methods and Apparatus for Providing Bit-Reversal and Multicast Functions Utilizing DMA Controller|
|US20080109413 *||31 Oct 2007||8 May 2008||Indeck Ronald S||Associative Database Scanning and Information Retrieval|
|US20080114725 *||12 Nov 2007||15 May 2008||Exegy Incorporated||Method and System for High Performance Data Metatagging and Data Indexing Using Coprocessors|
|US20080114760 *||31 Oct 2007||15 May 2008||Indeck Ronald S||Method and Apparatus for Approximate Matching of Image Data|
|US20080133453 *||31 Oct 2007||5 Jun 2008||Indeck Ronald S||Associative Database Scanning and Information Retrieval|
|US20080133519 *||31 Oct 2007||5 Jun 2008||Indeck Ronald S||Method and Apparatus for Approximate Matching of DNA Sequences|
|US20080229032 *||13 Mar 2007||18 Sep 2008||Sony Computer Entertainment Inc.||Cell processor atomic operation|
|US20090024833 *||28 Jul 2008||22 Jan 2009||Silicon Graphics, Inc.||Multiprocessor Node Controller Circuit and Method|
|US20090031412 *||30 Jun 2008||29 Jan 2009||Ellis Frampton E||Global network computers|
|US20090138675 *||28 Jan 2009||28 May 2009||Sony Computer Entertainment Inc.||Atomic compare and swap using dedicated processor|
|US20090161568 *||21 Dec 2007||25 Jun 2009||Charles Kastner||TCP data reassembly|
|US20090258844 *||15 Apr 2009||15 Oct 2009||Neurotherapeutics Pharma, Inc.||Compositions and methods for the treatment of disorders of the central and peripheral nervous systems|
|US20090287628 *||15 May 2008||19 Nov 2009||Exegy Incorporated||Method and System for Accelerated Stream Processing|
|US20090313439 *||19 Aug 2009||17 Dec 2009||International Business Machines Corporation||Managing coherence via put/get windows|
|US20100198850 *||5 Aug 2010||Exegy Incorporated||Method and Device for High Performance Regular Expression Pattern Matching|
|US20100257290 *||21 Jun 2010||7 Oct 2010||Altera Corporation||Methods and Apparatus for Providing Bit-Reversal and Multicast Functions Utilizing DMA Controller|
|US20110004930 *||24 Jun 2010||6 Jan 2011||Ellis Iii Frampton E||Global network computers|
|US20110040701 *||26 Oct 2010||17 Feb 2011||Exegy Incorporated||Method and System for High Speed Options Pricing|
|US20110072219 *||24 Nov 2010||24 Mar 2011||International Business Machines Corporation||Managing coherence via put/get windows|
|US20110167090 *||7 Jul 2011||Infoblox Inc.||Systems and methods for storing and retrieving data|
|US20110178911 *||21 Jul 2011||Exegy Incorporated||High Speed Processing of Financial Information Using FPGA Devices|
|US20110178912 *||21 Jul 2011||Exegy Incorporated||High Speed Processing of Financial Information Using FPGA Devices|
|US20110178917 *||21 Jul 2011||Exegy Incorporated||High Speed Processing of Financial Information Using FPGA Devices|
|US20110178919 *||21 Jul 2011||Exegy Incorporated||High Speed Processing of Financial Information Using FPGA Devices|
|US20110178957 *||21 Jul 2011||Exegy Incorporated||High Speed Processing of Financial Information Using FPGA Devices|
|US20110179050 *||21 Jul 2011||Exegy Incorporated||High Speed Processing of Financial Information Using FPGA Devices|
|US20110225392 *||15 Sep 2011||Altera Corporation||Methods and Apparatus for Providing Bit-Reversal and Multicast Functions Utilizing DMA Controller|
|US20110302333 *||8 Dec 2011||Altera Corporation||Methods and Apparatus for Providing Bit-Reversal and Multicast Functions Utilizing DMA Controller|
|US20120144064 *||7 Nov 2011||7 Jun 2012||Cray Inc.||Progressive adaptive routing in a dragonfly processor interconnect network|
|US20120317490 *||13 Dec 2012||Broadcom Corporation||Central System Based User Interface Resource Management|
|US20120331185 *||10 Jul 2012||27 Dec 2012||Altera Corporation||Methods and Apparatus for Providing Bit-Reversal and Multicast Functions Utilizing DMA Controller|
|EP1410216A2 *||25 Feb 2002||21 Apr 2004||International Business Machines Corporation||Managing coherence via put/get windows|
|WO2001024031A2 *||29 Sep 2000||5 Apr 2001||Deneroff Martin M||Multiprocessor node controller circuit and method|
|WO2002010947A2 *||30 Jul 2001||7 Feb 2002||Delvalley Ltd||Debugging of multiple data processors|
|WO2002069238A2 *||25 Feb 2002||6 Sep 2002||Matthias A Blumrich||Managing coherence via put/get windows|
|U.S. Classification||709/239, 711/E12.027, 710/38|
|International Classification||G06F15/80, G06F12/08, G06F15/173|
|Cooperative Classification||G06F12/0817, G06F15/8007, G06F15/17375|
|European Classification||G06F15/173N4A, G06F12/08B4P2, G06F15/80A|
|28 May 1996||AS||Assignment|
Owner name: CRAY RESEARCH, INC., MINNESOTA
Free format text: ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNORS INTEREST;ASSIGNORS:KESSLER, RICHARD E.;OBERLIN, STEVEN M.;SCOTT, STEVEN L.;REEL/FRAME:008020/0736;SIGNING DATES FROM 19960510 TO 19960515
|28 Jun 2000||AS||Assignment|
|15 Jan 2002||AS||Assignment|
|25 Jul 2002||FPAY||Fee payment|
Year of fee payment: 4
|13 Aug 2002||REMI||Maintenance fee reminder mailed|
|29 Dec 2003||AS||Assignment|
|26 Jul 2006||FPAY||Fee payment|
Year of fee payment: 8
|24 Oct 2006||AS||Assignment|
Owner name: GENERAL ELECTRIC CAPITAL CORPORATION,CALIFORNIA
Free format text: SECURITY INTEREST;ASSIGNOR:SILICON GRAPHICS, INC.;REEL/FRAME:018545/0777
Effective date: 20061017
|18 Oct 2007||AS||Assignment|
Owner name: MORGAN STANLEY & CO., INCORPORATED,NEW YORK
Free format text: ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNORS INTEREST;ASSIGNOR:GENERAL ELECTRIC CAPITAL CORPORATION;REEL/FRAME:019995/0895
Effective date: 20070926
|26 Jul 2010||FPAY||Fee payment|
Year of fee payment: 12
|16 Feb 2012||AS||Assignment|
Owner name: SILICON GRAPHICS INTERNATIONAL, CORP., CALIFORNIA
Free format text: ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNORS INTEREST;ASSIGNORS:SILICON GRAPHICS, INC. ET AL.;SGI INTERNATIONAL, INC.;SIGNING DATES FROM 20090508 TO 20120208;REEL/FRAME:027727/0212
|18 Apr 2014||AS||Assignment|
Owner name: SILICON GRAPHICS INTERNATIONAL CORP., CALIFORNIA
Free format text: MERGER;ASSIGNOR:SGI INTERNATIONAL, INC.;REEL/FRAME:032714/0427
Effective date: 20120808
Owner name: SILICON GRAPHICS INTERNATIONAL, INC., CALIFORNIA
Free format text: ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNORS INTEREST;ASSIGNOR:SILICON GRAPHICS, INC.;REEL/FRAME:032714/0032
Effective date: 20090508
Owner name: SGI INTERNATIONAL, INC., CALIFORNIA
Free format text: CHANGE OF NAME;ASSIGNOR:SILICON GRAPHICS INTERNATIONAL, INC.;REEL/FRAME:032714/0230
Effective date: 20090513
|28 Jan 2015||AS||Assignment|
Owner name: CRAY RESEARCH, L.L.C., CALIFORNIA
Free format text: MERGER;ASSIGNOR:CRAY RESEARCH, INC.;REEL/FRAME:034837/0218
Effective date: 19981229
|13 Mar 2015||AS||Assignment|
Owner name: MORGAN STANLEY SENIOR FUNDING, INC., NEW YORK
Free format text: SECURITY INTEREST;ASSIGNOR:SILICON GRAPHICS INTERNATIONAL CORP.;REEL/FRAME:035200/0722
Effective date: 20150127