Peer-To-Peer Communication Using Drain Buffers In Multi-Function Device

Abstract

Instead a having a system that lacks command draining, add a drain buffer to the solid state drive (SSD) to optimize command usage. By adding a drain buffer per physical function (PF) or virtual function (VF) and utilizing logic that can generate traffic, the controller is able to funnel packets to a host if the packet is not needed. The controller will change the original address of the packet to a different address. The controller will then send that packet with the different address through the host and back to the memory device. The packet will be in a different function, but the controller will know not to access the packet or ignore the packet. Ignoring the packet will act as a drain for the SSD. The controller PCIe packets draining occur in special flows, dummy traffic generation for PCIe attribute measurements, and internal events posting over the host/device interface.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.