INFINIBAND CHANNEL ADAPTER FOR PERFORMING DIRECT DMA BETWEEN PCI BUS AND INFINIBAND LINK

摘要

An Infiniband channel adapter for performing direct data transfers between a PCI bus and an Infiniband link without double-buffering the data in system memory. A local processor programs the channel adapter to decode addresses in a range of the PCI bus address space dedicated to direct transfers. When an I/O controller attached to the PCI bus transfers data from an I/O device to an address in the dedicated range, the channel adapter receives the data into an internal buffer and creates an Infiniband RDMA Write packet for transmission to virtual address within a remote Infiniband note. When the channel adapter receives an Infiniband RDMA Read Response packet, the channel adapter provides the packet payload data to the I/O controller at a PCI address in the dedicated range. A plurality of programmable address range registers facilitates multiple of the direct transfers concurrently by dividing the dedicated address range into multiple sub-ranges. The address range registers enable random mapping between the address sub-ranges and multiple internal buffers for receiving and transmitting Infiniband RDMA packets.