US 7,925,802 B2Granted

Hardware-based virtualization of BIOS, disks, network-interfaces, and consoles using a direct interconnect fabric

AssigneeSeamicro Corp.

InventorsGary Lauterbach, Anil Rao

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Abstract

A multi-computer system has many processors that share peripherals. The peripherals are virtualized by hardware without software drivers. Remote peripherals appear to the operating system to be located on the local processor's own peripheral bus. A processor, DRAM, and north bridge connect to a south bridge interconnect fabric chip that has a virtual Ethernet controller and a virtual generic peripheral that act as virtual endpoints for the local processor's peripheral bus. Requests received by the virtual endpoints are encapsulated in interconnect packets and sent over an interconnect fabric to a device manager that accesses remote peripherals on a shared remote peripheral bus so that data can be returned. Ethernet Network Interface Cards (NIC), hard disks, consoles, and BIOS are remote peripherals that can be virtualized. Processors can boot entirely from the remote BIOS without additional drivers or a local BIOS. Peripheral costs are reduced by sharing remote peripherals.

Claims20

Dependent claims

A peripheral-sharing multi-computer system comprising:

a plurality of processor cores, each processor core comprising:
a processor for executing instructions and generating requests to access peripherals;
a main memory for storing instructions executed and data used by the processor;
a local peripheral bus that carries the requests to access virtualized peripherals;
a plurality of interconnect interface devices, coupled to the plurality of processor cores, comprising hardware functioning as virtual endpoints for the requests to access virtualized peripherals from the processor, wherein the virtual peripherals appear to be on the local peripheral bus from a point of view of software executing on the processor;
an interconnect fabric coupled to the plurality of interconnect interface devices and carrying interconnect packets containing the requests to access peripherals generated by the plurality of processing cores;
a plurality of remote peripheral buses;
a plurality of remote peripherals on the plurality of remote peripheral buses, the plurality of remote peripherals comprising at least two of:
a Network Interface Card (NIC), a hard disk controller for accessing a hard disk, a Basic Input Output System (BIOS) memory, and a console;
a plurality of device managers, coupled to the interconnect fabric, for sending the requests to access peripherals contained in the interconnect packets over the plurality of remote peripheral buses to the plurality of remote peripherals, and for receiving reply data from the plurality of remote peripherals and sending the reply data in interconnect packets to the plurality of interconnect devices to respond to the requests to access peripherals,
whereby remote peripherals are accessed remotely through the interconnect fabric and virtualized peripherals appear to be on the local peripheral bus from the point of view of software executing on the processor.

8 more elements

A peripheral-virtualizing south bridge interconnect fabric chip comprising:

an I/O bus interface for physically interfacing to a local peripheral bus, the local peripheral bus connecting to a processor and to a main memory through a north bridge chip;
a virtual network controller comprising hardware functioning as a virtual endpoint for network protocol requests from the processor to access a network-interface card;
a virtual generic peripheral controller comprising hardware functioning as a virtual endpoint for generic requests from the processor to access a virtualized local peripheral;
wherein the virtualized local peripheral appears to be located on the local peripheral bus and is addressable on the local peripheral bus by unmodified software running on the processor that is not modified for virtualizing accesses of peripheral devices;
an I/O mapper that maps the network protocol requests from the processor to a first interconnect address, and that maps the generic requests from the processor to a second interconnect address;
a packet formatter that encapsulates the network protocol requests into interconnect packets, and that encapsulates the generic requests into interconnect packets;
and
a fabric interface that sends and receives interconnect packets over an interconnect fabric to a device manager;
wherein the device manager is coupled to a first remote peripheral bus that has a remote Network Interface Card (NIC) that connects to an external network, and a remote generic peripheral;
whereby remote peripherals on the first remote peripheral bus are accessed virtually through the interconnect fabric using virtual endpoints on the local peripheral bus.

7 more elements

A multi-computer system with shared remote peripherals comprising:

a plurality of Central Processing Unit (CPU) blade node cards;
a plurality of management cards;
an interconnect fabric that connects the plurality of CPU blade node cards to each other and to the plurality of management cards, the interconnect fabric being a multi-dimensional fabric carrying interconnect packets;
wherein each CPU blade node card in the plurality of CPU blade node cards comprises:
a CPU that executes instructions and generates peripheral requests;
a main memory for storing instructions executed by the CPU;
a local peripheral bus;
a north bridge that couples the main memory to the CPU, and drives the local peripheral bus with the peripheral requests generated by the CPU;
a south bridge interconnect fabric chip that comprises:
an I/O bus interface for physically interfacing to the local peripheral bus;
a virtual network controller comprising hardware functioning as a virtual endpoint for network-protocol requests from the CPU to access a network;
a virtual generic peripheral controller comprising hardware functioning as a virtual endpoint for generic requests from the CPU to access a virtualized local peripheral;
wherein the virtualized local peripheral appears to be located on the local peripheral bus and is addressable on the local peripheral bus by unmodified software running on the CPU that is not modified for virtualizing accesses of peripheral devices;
an I/O mapper that maps the network-protocol requests from the CPU to a first interconnect address, and that maps the generic requests from the CPU to a second interconnect address;
a packet formatter that encapsulates the network-protocol requests into interconnect packets, and that encapsulates the generic requests into interconnect packets;
and
a fabric interface that sends and receives interconnect packets over the interconnect fabric;
wherein a first management card in the plurality of management cards comprises:
an interconnect switch for sending and receiving interconnect packets from the interconnect fabric;
a remote packet formatter for extracting the network-protocol requests and the generic requests from the interconnect packets, and for encapsulating reply data into interconnect packets sent back to the CPU blade node cards through the interconnect fabric;
a remote network interface card that receives the network-protocol requests from the remote packet formatter, and sends and receives network packets over an external network in response to the network-protocol requests, and generates reply data received from the external network;
and
a remote generic peripheral controller that receives the generic requests from the remote packet formatter, the remote generic peripheral controller accessing a hard disk to generate the reply data in response to generic requests to access the hard disk,
whereby remote peripherals are shared among the CPU blade node cards.

21 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.