Method and system for high speed data links
AssigneeHewlett Packard Enterprise Development LP
InventorsMark Ronald Sikkink, Randal Steven Passint, Joseph Martin Placek, Russell Leonard Nicol
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Abstract
Various embodiments improve the operation of computers by providing methods of transmitting data with low latency and high bandwidth. Data may be transmitted in a packet composed of data flits, the data flits having at least two different formats configured to implement different communication protocols. In some embodiments, a given flit may be transmitted using two different modulation methods, with a first part of the flit transmitted using a first modulation method, such as a binary method, and a second part of the flit using a higher-order modulation method.
Claims7
1-22. (canceled)
A method comprising:
- generating a packet comprising a plurality of flits formatted according to different communication protocols, the packet including a link-level flit formatted for according to a first communications protocol supporting link-level retry and a plurality of end-to-end flits formatted according to a second communications protocol supporting end-to-end retry;
- and
- transmitting the plurality of flits over a communications channel from the transmitter to the receiver in a contiguous burst.
The method of claim 1, wherein
- the first link-level flit is a header flit identifying the beginning of the contiguous burst of flits, and the packet further comprises:
- a second link-level flit formatted as a tail flit to identify the end of the contiguous burst.
The method of claim 2, wherein the header flit includes:
- a header sideband field storing meta data identifying the first link-level flit as the header flit, and a sideband cyclic redundancy check (CRC) field having a CRC value corresponding to the sideband meta data.
The method of claim 2, wherein the end-to-end flit format includes a payload field storing a sub-set of the data, and a freight sideband field identifying the flit as an end-to-end flit.
The method claim 2, wherein the tail flit includes a payload field having an end-to-end CRC value for the plurality of end-to-end flits.
The method of claim 1, wherein transmitting the plurality of flits from the transmitter to the receiver in a contiguous stream comprises transmitting the plurality of flits over a single virtual channel.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.