Apparatus for reducing the overhead of cache coherency processing on each primary controller and increasing the overall throughput of the system
AssigneeInternational Business Machines Corporation
InventorsWilliam A. Brant, Mohamad H. El-Batal, Thomas E. Richardson
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A bridged controller for reducing the overhead of cache coherency processing on each of a plurality of primary controllers and increasing the overall throughput of the system. The bridged controller interfaces with dual-active pair of host-side controllers and the backend disk drive buses. The third controller allows a doubling of the number of backend busses, reduces the overhead of cache coherency processing on each primary host-side controller and doubles the overall throughput.
Claims18
A bridged storage controller, comprising a control unit having 2N ports coupled to 2N disk channels, the 2N disk channels being shared by the bridged storage controller and N host-side controllers to increase system performance.
A storage system, comprising:
- a plurality of hosts;
- a storage system;
- N host-side controllers disposed between the plurality of hosts and the storage system;
- and
- a bridged controller disposed between the N host-side controllers and the storage system, the bridged controller comprising a control unit having 2N ports coupled to 2N disk channels, the 2N disk channels being shared by the bridged storage controller and N host-side controllers to increase system performance.
A bridged storage controller, comprising control means having 2N ports coupled to 2N disk channel means, the 2N disk channel means being shared by the bridged storage controller and N host-side controller means for increasing system performance.
A storage system, comprising:
- a plurality of hosts;
- storage means for storing system data;
- N host-side controller means disposed between the plurality of hosts and the storage system for providing access by the plurality of host to data on the storage means;
- and
- bridged controller means disposed between the N host-side controller means and the storage means for increasing the performance of the storage system, the bridged controller means comprising a control unit having 2N ports coupled to 2N disk channel means, the 2N disk channel means being shared by the bridged storage controller and N host-side controllers for increasing system performance.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.