Dynamic hardware resource shadowing and memory error protection
AssigneeCisco Technology, Inc.
InventorsRiaz Khan, Peter Geoffrey Jones
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
Embodiments of the present disclosure are directed to dynamic shadow operations configured to dynamically shadow data-plane resources in a network device. In some embodiments, the dynamic resource shadow operations are used to locally maintain a shadow copy of data plane resources to avoid having to read them through a bus interconnect. In other embodiments, the dynamic shadow framework is used to provide memory protection for hardware resources against SEU failures. The dynamic shadow framework may operate in conjunction with adaptive memory scrubbing operations. In other embodiments, the dynamic shadow infrastructure is used to facilitate fast boot-up and fast upgrade operations.
Claims20
A network device comprising:
- a memory;
- and
- a processor unit or logic circuit configured to:
- receive a memory error notification from a data plane of the network device, wherein the memory error notification is associated with a data-plane resource, or a portion thereof of the network device;
- determine whether the data-plane resource, or the portion thereof, has a corresponding shadow copy stored in the memory;
- if it is determined that the data-plane resource, or the portion thereof, does not have a corresponding shadow copy stored in the memory, initiate creation of the shadow copy of the data-plane resource, or the portion thereof, wherein the shadow copy is created by first creating an instance of a resource shadow and then synchronizing the resource shadow with configuration data stored in a data-plane database;
- and
- if it is determined that the data-plane resource, or the portion thereof, has a corresponding shadow copy or once the shadow copy is created, perform a correction of the data-plane resource based on the shadow copy, wherein the shadow copy stored in the memory is added based a data-plane read access for the data-plane resource, or the portion thereof, by a host processor of the network device, and wherein the shadow copy stored in the memory is retained and/or removed based on a frequency of access of the data-plane resource, or the portion thereof.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.