REDUCING LATENCY AND MESSAGE TRAFFIC DURING DATA AND LOCK TRANSFER IN A MULTI-NODE SYSTEM

摘要

A method and apparatus are provided for improving the performance associated with transferring a data item and obtaining a lock in a multi-node system by interpreting the block transfer message as a lock grant message. Typically when a Holder of a data item transfers a data item (e.g. block) to a Requestor of that data item, the Holder will down-convert its lock for that data item and send a message to the Master of this data item indicating that a down-convert has been performed. Subsequently, the Master sends a lock grant message to the Requestor of the data item to inform the Requestor that it has been granted a lock for the data item. By interpreting the block transfer message as a lock grant message, the down-convert message and the lock grant message can be eliminated, which results in improved performance.