Symmetrical control of hardware peripherals
AssigneeMellanox Technologies, Ltd.
InventorsAyal Josef Lior, Ortal Bashan
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
A network device includes packet processing circuitry, one or more hardware peripherals, a Baseboard Management Controller (BMC) and a Central Processing Unit (CPU). The packet processing circuitry is to communicate packets over a network. The BMC is to control the hardware peripherals. The CPU is to perform control-plane operations for communicating the packets by the packet processing circuitry. Each of the CPU and the BMC is to modify states of the hardware peripherals, and to synchronize the other of the BMC and the CPU with the modified state of the hardware peripherals.
Claims20
A network device, comprising:
- packet processing circuitry, to communicate packets over a network;
- one or more hardware peripherals;
- a Baseboard Management Controller (BMC), to control the hardware peripherals;
- and
- a Central Processing Unit (CPU), to perform control-plane operations for communicating the packets by the packet processing circuitry,
- wherein, for a given state modification operation to be performed in a hardware peripheral among the hardware peripherals, each of the CPU and the BMC is to perform the given state modification operation in the hardware peripheral, and to synchronize the other of the BMC and the CPU with a modified state of the hardware peripheral.
A method, comprising:
- communicating packets over a network by a network device that includes a Baseboard Management Controller (BMC), a Central Processing Unit (CPU), and one or more hardware peripherals;
- using the CPU, performing control-plane operations for communicating the packets;
- and
- for a given state modification operation to be performed in a hardware peripheral among the hardware peripherals, using any of the CPU and the BMC, performing the given state modification operation in the hardware peripheral, and synchronizing the other of the BMC and the CPU with the modified state of the hardware peripheral.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.