Storing Data Using A Direct Data Path Architecture To Reduce Energy Consumption And Improve Performance

• US 20120198030A1
• Filed: 12/22/2011
• Published: 08/02/2012
• Est. Priority Date: 12/22/2011
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Intel Corporation
• Original Assignee: Intel Corporation
• Inventors: Wang, Ren, Maciocco, Christian, Tai, Tsung-Yuan C., Vij, Mona, Raghunath, Arun, Keys, John, Hahn, Scott, Yavatkar, Raj, Samih, Ahmad
• Granted Patent: US 9,239,607 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 709/219
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 1/3234 Power saving characterised by the action undertaken
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/1737 for reducing power consumption or coping with limited storage space, e.g. in mobile devices saving storage space on storage devices G06F3/0608; power saving in storage systems G06F3/0625
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0625 Power saving in storage systems
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/02 based on web technology, e.g. hypertext transfer protocol [HTTP]
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/06 specially adapted for file transfer, e.g. file transfer protocol [FTP]
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 69/22 Parsing or analysis of headers

Abstract

In one embodiment, the present invention includes a method for obtaining file information regarding a file to be downloaded from a remote location to a computing device, creating at least one empty file in a destination storage based on the file information and communicating block information regarding the empty file to a network interface, and receiving a data packet of the file in the network interface and directly sending a payload of the data packet from the network interface to the destination storage according to the block information, while a host processor of the computing device is in a low power state. Other embodiments are described and claimed.

Claims

1. At least one computer accessible medium comprising instructions that when executed cause a computing device to:

obtain file information regarding a file to be downloaded from a remote location to a computing device;

create at least one empty file in a destination storage of the computing device based on the file information and communicate block information regarding the at least one empty file to a network interface of the computing device; and

receive a data packet of the file in the network interface and directly send a payload of the data packet from the network interface to the destination storage according to the block information, while a host processor of the computing device is in a low power state.

2. The at least one computer accessible medium of claim 1, wherein the instructions further cause the computing device to forward a control header of the data packet to the host processor of the computing device.

3. The at least one computer accessible medium of claim 1, wherein the instructions further cause the computing device to use a file system of the computing device to create the at least one empty file.

4. The at least one computer accessible medium of claim 1, wherein the instructions further cause the computing device to provide the payload from the network interface to a security processor of the computing device interposed between the network interface and the destination storage.

5. The at least one computer accessible medium of claim 1, wherein the file comprises audio information, and the destination storage comprises a random access memory (RAM) disk of the computing device.

6. The at least one computer accessible medium of claim 1, wherein the instructions further cause the computing device to directly send the payload from the network interface to the destination storage without intermediately storing the payload in a system memory of the computing device.

7. The at least one computer accessible medium of claim 6, wherein the instructions further cause the computing device to maintain the system memory in a low power state while the file is downloaded to the computing device.

8. The at least one computer accessible medium of claim 1, wherein the instructions further cause the computing device to power down a core domain of a system on a chip (SoC) of the computing device while directly sending the payload from the network interface to the destination storage.

9. The at least one computer accessible medium of claim 8, wherein the instructions further cause the computing device to power a device domain and an interconnect domain of the SoC while directly sending the payload from the network interface to the destination storage, the device domain including the network interface.

10. The at least one computer accessible medium of claim 9, wherein the instructions further cause the computing device to power the core domain of the SoC while the network interface receives at least some data packets of the file, and perform processing unrelated to the file in the core domain.

11. A system on a chip (SoC) comprising:

a core domain including a plurality of cores to independently execute instructions;

an interconnect domain to couple the core domain to a plurality of intellectual property (IP) logics of a device domain; and

the device domain including a source IP logic, the source IP logic to couple to a network to receive a file requested by a user, the source IP logic to directly transfer payload data of data packets of the file to a destination IP logic, without communication of the payload data to the core domain and responsive to communication of direct data transfer setup information received from the core domain, while at least a portion of the core domain is in a low power state.

12. The SoC of claim 11, wherein the direct data transfer of payload is through the interconnect domain and bypasses the core domain.

13. The SoC of claim 11, wherein the destination IP logic comprises a random access memory (RAM) disk portion of a system memory.

14. The SoC of claim 11, wherein the source IP logic is to communicate control information of at least one of the data packets of the file to the core domain.

15. The SoC of claim 14, wherein the core domain is to cause an empty file to be created within the destination IP logic responsive to an application request.

16. The SoC of claim 15, wherein the core domain is to communicate file block information associated with the empty file and corresponding to the direct data transfer setup information to the source IP logic to enable the source IP logic to directly transfer the payload data of data packets of the file to the destination IP logic.

17. A system comprising:

a processor to execute instructions;

a wireless transceiver to transmit and receive instructions wirelessly;

a source agent to couple to a network to receive a file requested by a client application executing on the processor;

a destination agent coupled to the source agent to store the file; and

at least one storage medium including instructions that enable the system to obtain file information regarding the file, communicate the file information to a file system of the system via the client application, create at least one file in the destination agent based on the file information via the file system and communicate block information regarding the at least one file to the source agent, and to thereafter receive a data packet of the file in the source agent, provide a control portion of the data packet to the processor, and provide a data portion of the data packet directly to the destination agent according to the block information via a bypass path that couples the source agent and the destination agent while bypassing the processor and a system memory while the processor is in a low power state.

18. The system of claim 17, wherein the source agent is to communicate an exception associated with receipt of the file to the processor, and the processor is to handle the exception.

19. The system of claim 18, wherein the processor is to provide additional block information to the source agent responsive to the exception when the exception corresponds to a request for additional storage space for the file.

20. The system of claim 19, wherein the source agent is to provide data portions of additional data packets of the file directly to the destination agent according to the additional block information via the bypass path.