US 2011/0238778 A1Published application

Reducing Packet Size In A Communication Protocol

AssigneeIntel Corporation

InventorsPhanindra K. Mannava, Hari K. Nagpal, Meenakshisundaram R. Chinthamani, Robert J. Safranek

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Abstract

In one embodiment, the present invention includes a processor that can generate data packets for transmission to an agent, where the processor can generate a data packet having a command portion including a first operation code to encode a transaction type for the data packet and a second operation code to encode a processor-specific operation. This second operation code can encode many different features such as an indication that the data packet is of a smaller size than a standard packet, in order to reduce bandwidth. This operation code can also identify an operation to be performed by a destination agent coupled to the agent. Other embodiments are described and claimed.

Claims18

Dependent claims

A method comprising:

receiving a request for an atomic memory operation in a first agent from a remote agent, the request including a first operand, an opcode for the atomic memory operation, and an address to enable access to a second operand;
sending a memory access request from the first agent to a memory controller coupled to a memory to obtain the second operand, responsive to the request;
performing an operation responsive to the atomic memory operation opcode on the first and second operands in one of the first agent and the memory controller to obtain a result, wherein the second operand is of a smaller size than a size of a data portion according to a communication protocol of a link between the first agent and the remote agent, and wherein the request is received in a data packet having a smaller size than a data packet size for the communication protocol;
and
storing the result in the memory.

2 more elements

A system comprising:

a first processor including a link logic to generate data packets for transmission on a first link coupled between the first processor and a first network interface controller (NIC), the first link according to a communication protocol, the link logic to generate a first data packet having a command portion including a first operation code to encode a transaction type of the first data packet and a second operation code to encode a processor-specific operation to be performed by a second processor;
the first NIC coupled to the first processor via the first link;
a second NIC coupled to the first NIC via a fabric;
and
the second processor coupled to the second NIC to receive the first data packet and to perform the processor-specific operation responsive to the first and second operation codes.

2 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.