Computer network controller

In a system area network comprising a switching fabric, a plurality of host channel adapters and a plurality of target channel adapters, each said adapter comprising:

• a network protocol engine configured to schedule packets for transmission onto the system area network;
• a data buffer configured to handle one or more payloads;
• a fully associative context block configured to hold a plurality of last recently used contexts to provide a dynamic resource allocation scheme reflecting run time situations;
• an address translation table coupled to said network protocol engine and configured to:
• maintain inbound address mapping;
• and
• store context information not currently stored in said context block;
• a dedicated, programmable micro sequencer tightly coupled to said context block and configured to:
• control said context block and handle control flow;
• and
• process multiple types of network packets and protocols;
• a bus attachment module;
• and
• a network link interface;
• wherein said micro sequencer is packet format independent and network independent;
• and
• wherein said contexts are updated by said micro sequencer, by an inbound scheduler and by said network protocol engine.

A protocol engine for a channel adapter configured to interface a system area network with a network node, the protocol engine comprising:

• an inbound scheduler configured to schedule one or more of the following for each of a plurality of tasks:
• decoding, scheduling and invoking;
• a multi-context micro sequencer configured to handle control flow for multiple communication channels between the network node and the system area network, wherein said multi-context micro sequencer is packet format independent and network independent;
• a context block configured to store a set of least recently used contexts, wherein each said context corresponds to one of the communication channels;
• a data buffer configured to buffer payloads of packets for the multiple communication channels;
• and
• a network protocol engine configured to schedule transmission of packets onto the system area network;
• wherein a subset of said set of contexts stored in said context blocks is reserved for outbound RDMA (Remote Direct Memory Access);
• and
• wherein a remainder of said contexts in said set of contexts are dynamically allocated among inbound RDMA, inbound RMA (Remote Memory Access) and outbound RMA.