Reliable transport of ethernet packet data with wire-speed and packet data rate match

摘要

Method, apparatus, and systems for reliably transferring Ethernet packet data over a link layer and facilitating fabric-to-Ethernet and Ethernet-to-fabric gateway operations at matching wire speed and packet data rate. Ethernet header and payload data is extracted from Ethernet frames received at the gateway and encapsulated in fabric packets to be forwarded to a fabric endpoint hosting an entity to which the Ethernet packet is addressed. The fabric packets are divided into flits, which are bundled in groups to form link packets that are transferred over the fabric at the Link layer using a reliable transmission scheme employing implicit ACKnowledgements. At the endpoint, the fabric packet is regenerated, and the Ethernet packet data is de-encapsulated. The Ethernet frames received from and transmitted to an Ethernet network are encoded using 64b/66b encoding, having an overhead-to-data bit ratio of 1:32. Meanwhile, the link packets have the same ratio, including one overhead bit per flit and a 14-bit CRC plus a 2-bit credit return field or sideband used for credit-based flow control.

主权项

1. A method for reliably transferring a stream of Ethernet packets between fabric endpoints, comprising:
for each of a plurality of Ethernet packets in the stream of Ethernet packets, encapsulating Ethernet packet data comprising an Ethernet header and Ethernet payload in a fabric packet at a first fabric endpoint; transmitting data content for the fabric packet via a forwarding path comprising a plurality of links to a second fabric endpoint; employing implicit ACKnowledgements (ACKs) to verify, for transmission over each link, the transmitted data content has been received at the receive side of the link without error; regenerating the fabric packet using the data content received at the second fabric endpoint; and de-encapsulating the Ethernet packet data from the regenerated fabric packet.