Universal PCI express port

摘要

Methods and systems are disclosed herein for providing a universal PCIe port. In one example, the same port is configured to accept a PCIe connection as a host or an endpoint symmetrically. Downstream transactions towards an endpoint can be intercepted and a virtual address in the downstream transaction can be translated to a local address using a mapping. The downstream transactions can be forwarded to the endpoint using the local address instead of the virtual address. For endpoints that share the same local address with multiple hosts, a reverse lookup may be provided to determine which one of the hosts a local address corresponds when forwarding upstream transactions. PCIe over Ethernet is provided as one embodiment for allowing remote PCIe endpoints to be associated with a local host transparently.

主权项

1. A method for managing transactions between Peripheral Component Interconnect Express (PCIe) host(s) and PCIe endpoint(s) communicably connected to each other through an interconnect fabric, the method comprising:
intercepting a downstream transaction transmitted from a first host to a first endpoint by a proxy processor between a host interface and a root complex interface of an interconnect fabric, wherein the transaction comprises a virtual address of the first endpoint according to a first virtual topology associated with the first host, and the first virtual topology associates the first host with virtual address(es) of one or more endpoints of the host; translating the virtual address to a local address of the first endpoint using a first mapping between virtual address(es) of the one or more endpoints of the first host and local address(es) of the corresponding endpoints; forwarding, to the first endpoint through the root complex interface, the downstream transaction using the local address of the first endpoint instead of the virtual address; intercepting an upstream transaction transmitted from a second endpoint addressable by a local address of the second endpoint; and performing a reverse lookup of the local address of the second endpoint to determine to which one of different hosts the second endpoint corresponds.