Graceful degradation of serial channels
OwnerAkash Bansal, Jaisimha Bannur +1inventors
InventorsAkash Bansal, Jaisimha Bannur, Anujan Varma
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Abstract
In general, in one aspect, the disclosure describes an apparatus that includes a transmission module to split a data segment into a plurality of data stripes and transmit each data strip over an associated serial channel, a reception module to receive the plurality of data stripes over the associated serial channels and track a number of errors per channel, and a controller to deactivate a serial channel and reconfigure said transmission module and said reception module to utilize remaining data channels for striping data if the number of errors in the serial channel exceeds a threshold.
Claims31
An apparatus, comprising:
- a transmission module to split a data segment into a plurality of data stripes and transmit each data strip over an associated serial channel;
- a reception module to receive the plurality of data stripes over the associated serial channels and track a number of errors per channel;
- and
- a controller to control the operation of the apparatus, said controller to deactivate a serial channel and reconfigure said transmission module and said reception module to utilize remaining data channels for striping data if the number of errors in the serial channel exceeds a threshold.
A method, comprising:
- dividing a data segment into a plurality of data stripes and associating each data stripe with one of a plurality of serial channels;
- transmitting the data stripes from a first card to a second card over the associated serial channels;
- receiving the data stripes at the second card;
- detecting errors in the data stripes;
- tracking number of errors per serial channel;
- and
- deactivating a serial channel and reconfiguring remaining serial channels for striping data if the number of errors in the serial channel exceeds a threshold.
A store and forward device, comprising:
- a plurality of interface cards to receive and transmit data;
- a backplane connecting the plurality of cards together via a plurality of serial channels;
- a transmission module to split a data segment into a plurality of data stripes and transmit each data stripe over an associated serial channel;
- a reception module to receive the plurality of data stripes over the associated serial channels and track a number of errors per channel;
- and
- a controller to control the operation of the apparatus, wherein said controller may deactivate a serial channel and reconfigure said transmission module and said reception module to utilize a remaining data channels for striping data if the number of errors in the serial channel exceeds a threshold.
A computer program product, disposed on a computer readable medium, the program including instructions for causing a processor to:
- track a number of errors per serial channel carrying stripes of data segments;
- and
- deactivate a serial channel and reconfigure remaining serial channels for striping data if the number of errors in the serial channel exceeds a threshold.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.