HIGH-SPEED, HIGH-CAPACITY, FAULT-TOLERANT, ERROR-CORRECTING STORAGE SYSTEM FOR BINARY COMPUTERS

摘要

This invention provides disk drive access control apparatus for connection between a host computer (10) and a plurality of disk drives (16) to provide an asynchronously operating, high-speed, high-capacity, fault-tolerant, error-correcting storage system. It also provides increases in performance over earlier versions thereof. There are a plurality of disk drive controller channels (46) connected to respective ones of the disk drives and controlling transfers of data to and from the disk drives, each of the disk drive controller channels includes a cache/buffer memory (48) and a micro-processor unit (50). An interface and driver unit (42) interfaces with the host computer (10) and there is a central cache memory (54). Cache memory control logic controls transfers of data from the chache/ buffer memory (48) of the plurality of disk drive controller channels (46) to the cache memory (54) and from the cache memory (54) to the cache/buffer memory (48) of the plurality of disk drive controller channels (46) and from the cache memory (54) to the host computer (10) through the interface and driver unit (42). A central processing unit (60) manages the use of the cache memory by requesting data transfers only of data not presently in the cache memory (54) and by sending high level commands to the disk drive controller channels (46). A first (data) bus (64) interconnects the plurality of disk drive cache/buffer memories (48), the interface and driver unit (42), and the cache memory (54) for the transfer of information therebetween and a second (information and commands) bus (52) interconnects the same elements with the central processing unit (60) for the transfer of control and information therebetween.