System and method for communicating over intra-hierarchy and inter-hierarchy links
AssigneeIntel Corporation
InventorsJoseph Schaefer, David B. Minturn, Prashant Sethi
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A system having an I/O interconnect topology utilizes internal packetized communications. The system includes a host system element, a plurality of switching elements, and a root complex to bridge communications between the host system and the switching elements. The ports of at least some of the switching elements have a cross-link device associated therewith, which is a logical device defined by configuration space of the switching element. Each cross-link device defines a cross-link communication path between two switching elements of the hierarchy allowing communications between peripherals to bypass the host.
Claims20
A system comprising:
- a plurality of switching elements and a plurality of cross-link devices, wherein ports of at least some of the switching elements are associated with the cross-link devices, the cross-link devices defined by configuration space of the switching elements, the cross-link devices providing a cross-link communication path between two of the switching elements;
- and
- a root complex to bridge packetized communications between a host system element and the switching elements,
- wherein the host system element is configured to discover cross-link communication paths provided by the cross-link devices during an enumeration process performed by the host system element to define the configuration space for an associated one of the cross link devices, wherein the host system element is configured to modify a write pattern to configuration space of a first one of the cross-link devices, and wherein the host system element is configured to compare the modified write pattern with a corresponding pattern within configuration space associated with a second cross-link device.
A method for communication between peripherals comprising:
- discovering intra-hierarchical communication links between a first switching element and a second switch within an I/O interconnect topology of a first host system utilizing internal packetized communications;
- configuring configuration space for communication over the discovered links including configuring a configuration space associated with a first cross-link device of the first switching element and configuring a configuration space associated with a second cross-link device of the second switching element, wherein configuring is performed by a host system element, and wherein configuring the configuration space includes a peripheral component interconnect (PCI) enumeration;
- and
- communicating over the intra-hierarchical communication links.
An article comprising a storage medium having stored thereon instructions, that when executed by a computing platform, result in:
- discovering intra-hierarchical communication links between a first switching element and a second switching element within an I/O interconnect topology of a first host system utilizing internal packetized communications;
- configuring configuration space for communication over the discovered links including configuring a configuration space associated with a first cross-link device of the first switching element and configuring a configuration space associated with a second cross-link device of the second switching element, wherein configuring is performed by a host system element, and wherein configuring the configuration space includes a peripheral component interconnect (PCI) enumeration;
- and
- communicating over the intra-hierarchical communication links.
A communication device comprising:
- a plurality of down-stream ports to provide a top of an I/O interconnect topology, wherein at least one of the downstream ports is configured to interface with a peripheral component interconnect (PCI)-to-PCI bridge;
- and
- a processing element to implement intra-hierarchical communications between the ports, wherein a first port of the ports is associated with a first cross-link device, wherein a second port of the ports is associated with a second cross-link device, and wherein the processing element is to discover the intra-hierarchical communication links within the topology, and is to configure configuration space of each of the first and second cross-link devices for communication over the discovered links for communications over the intra-hierarchical communication links.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.