PCI Express Connected Network Switch

摘要

A host connected to a switch using a PCI Express (PCIe) link. At the switch, the packets are received and routed as appropriate and provided to a conventional switch network port for egress. The conventional networking hardware on the host is substantially moved to the port at the switch, with various software portions retained as a driver on the host. This saves cost and space and reduces latency significantly. As networking protocols have multiple threads or flows, these flows can correlate to PCIe queues, easing QoS handling. The data provided over the PCIe link is essentially just the payload of the packet, so sending the packet from the switch as a different protocol just requires doing the protocol specific wrapping. In some embodiments, this use of different protocols can be done dynamically, allowing the bandwidth of the PCIe link to be shared between various protocols.

主权项

1. A switch comprising:
a switch processor; a memory coupled to the processor for storing programs to cause the switch processor to perform various methods; a plurality of network ports for transferring network protocol packets and for connection to a network or a fabric, each of the network ports complying with a network protocol selected from at least one of Ethernet, Fibre Channel or Infiniband; a plurality of Peripheral Component Interconnect Express (PCIe) ports for transferring PCIe packets and for connection to a host computer and for mapping PCIe packets to network protocol packets based on context information; and a switching mechanism interconnecting the plurality of network ports and the plurality of PCIe ports.