Smart cable for connecting storage drives
AssigneeMicrochip Technology Incorporated
InventorGerhard Ristau
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A smart cable for backplane storage management is provided. The cable may include a microcontroller, a power conditioning circuitry to regulate an input voltage from a power supply and provide an output voltage to the microcontroller, a storage device coupled to the microcontroller, a first end to be coupled to one or more storage devices, and a second end to be coupled to a storage controller. The microcontroller may receive sideband signals from the one or more storage drives, and may transmit connection topology information to the storage controller based at least in part on the sideband signals.
Claims24
A cable comprising:
- a microcontroller;
- a power conditioning circuitry to regulate an input voltage from a power supply and provide an output voltage to the microcontroller;
- a storage device coupled to the microcontroller;
- a first end to be coupled to one or more storage drives;
- and
- a second end to be coupled to a storage controller;
- wherein the microcontroller is to receive sideband signals from the one or more storage drives, and to transmit connection topology information to the storage controller based at least in part on the sideband signals.
A method comprising:
- transmitting and receiving sideband signals to and from one or more storage drives that are coupled to a first end of a cable;
- and
- transmitting connection topology information to a storage controller that is coupled to a second end of the cable to enable communication between the one or more storage drives and the storage controller.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.