Methods and apparatus for improved raid parity computation in a storage controller

摘要

Methods and apparatus for improved calculation of redundancy information in RAID storage controllers. Features and aspects hereof provide for a firmware/software element (FPE) for generating redundancy information in combination with a custom logic circuit (HPE) designed to generate redundancy information. A scheduler element operable on a processor of a storage controller along with the FPE determines which of the FPE and HPE is best suited to rapidly complete a new redundancy computation operation and activates or queues the new operation for performance by the selected component.

主权项

1. A Redundant Array of Independent Disks (RAID) storage controller comprising:
a programmable processor programmed to process I/O requests from attached systems; a firmware redundancy computation element operable on the programmable processor of the storage controller, the firmware redundancy computation element operable to generate redundancy information from data applied to the firmware redundancy computation element; a redundancy computation circuit coupled with the programmable processor and operable to generate redundancy information from data applied to the redundancy computation circuit; and a scheduler element operable on the programmable processor, the scheduler element operable to selectively utilize either the firmware redundancy computation element or the redundancy computation circuit for generating redundancy information in the storage controller based on present operating conditions of the storage controller, wherein the redundancy information is used by the controller in processing RAID storage management relating to the I/O requests.