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Fibre channel arbitrated loop bufferless switch circuitry to increase bandwidth without significant increase in cost

  • US 20090074408A1
  • Filed: 11/19/2008
  • Published: 03/19/2009
  • Est. Priority Date: 01/23/1997
  • Status: Active Grant
First Claim
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1. A packet switching switch, comprising:

  • port circuits each having an input and an output configured to connect to an fibre channel arbitrated loop net coupled to one or more node loop nodes and configured to implement a fibre channel loop protocol, and each having a crossbar switch port coupled to a crossbar switch; and

    a controller coupled to a protocol bus configured to maintain a scoreboard table containing at least status information and a routing table either centrally located or in each port circuit, the routing table containing data mapping destination addresses of node loop nodes to port ids,wherein the port circuits are coupled to the controller to maintain a scoreboard table and routing table and wherein the port circuits function to establish connections between themselves by using destination addresses in open primitives received from source nodes to search the routing table to determine the identifier of a remote port coupled to the destination node having the destination address in the open and, using that port identifier to search the scoreboard table to determine status of the remote port, and then exchanging messages with the remote port to cause it to arbitrate for and take control of its local fibre channel arbitrated loop network and establish a particular channel through the crossbar switch and use the channel to transmit primitives and data frames between the source node and the destination node.

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