System and method to accelerate access to network data using a networking unit accessible non-volatile storage

摘要

In some embodiments, the invention involves a network controller having a pattern matching unit to identify whether boot file requested from a network accessible storage device for booting are stored locally in non-volatile memory accessible to the network controller. When required boot files are stored locally, the locally stored files are sent to the processor to boot the operating system. In an embodiment, retrieved boot files are automatically cached by the network controller in the accessible non-volatile memory. In other embodiments, a service operates to ensure coherency between locally store boot files and the boot filed stored on the network accessible storage. In another embodiment, data other than boot files may be stored and retrieved from the non-volatile memory. Other embodiments are described and claimed.

主权项

1. A system for accelerating network data requests, comprising:
a processor communicatively coupled to a network controller to generate a plurality of file requests each for an operating system boot file to boot an operating system; the network controller receiving the plurality of requests for the boot files, the network controller having access to non-volatile memory (NVM) for storing a plurality of operating system boot files locally, wherein the network controller is configured to selectively retrieve the requested operating system boot files from a remote network accessible storage (NAS) device and the local non-volatile memory at boot time to boot an operating system on the processor; and the network controller further comprising a pattern matching unit configured to identify requests to the remote network accessible storage to retrieve boot files necessary to boot the operating system, and to selectively retrieve requested boot files from the local NVM instead of the remote NAS when the requested boot files are identified as having been stored in the local NVM, and to retrieve the requested boot files from the remote NAS when the requested boot files are not present in the local NVM, the pattern matching unit to identify requested boot files as boot files that have been stored in the local NVM by an extraction of a file name, file offset, and data size for each requested boot file, and then by a determination of whether the extracted file name, file offset, and data size match an entry in the local NVM.