EXPANDED IMAGE STORAGE AND DISSEMINATION ARCHITECTURE

摘要

AN EXPANDED IMAGE STORAGE AND DISSEMINATION ARCHITECTURE An architecture (20) that provides for the connection of storage media and disksto multiple workstations (15) or ports, and which overcomes rate incompatibilities of the various components in the architecture (20). The rate incompatibilities are overcome such that one storage unit (13) may be connected to many workstations (15) so that individual workstations (15) operate as though they were the only connection to the storage unit (13). The storage unit (13) is operated in parallel using a redundant array of storage disks to supply data at a very high rate. The disks are connected through a high speed backplane bus (24) to rate buffers on input and output cards. The input and output cards are connected by high speed optical data links (26) to interface cards in the workstations (15) that accept data transmitted at high data rates and deliver the data to the workstation memory. Each input or output card is time shared by a number of workstations (15). The data is moved through the input or output card on the storage unit (13) so quickly that there is a low probability of two workstations (15) wanting to move data through the same port at the same time.