SELECTING A MASTER PROCESSOR FROM AN AMBIGUOUS PEER GROUP
1 Assignment
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Accused Products
Abstract
A distributed switch may include a plurality of special-purpose processors that control the different functions of the switch. To enable some special services, however, the distributed switch may need one of these processors to perform the role of a master. When a processor is powered on, the processor may publish a corresponding unique ID. Before electing the master, the special-purpose processors may use a discovery process to identify the network topology of the switch and evaluate the published IDs to determine which processor should be the master. If all the processors nominate the same master processor, then that processor is elected as the master and may finish configuring the distributed switch to enable the special services.
8 Citations
20 Claims
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1-7. -7. (canceled)
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8. A computer program product for electing a master processor from a plurality of processors, the computer program product comprising:
a computer-readable storage medium having computer-readable program code embodied therewith, the computer-readable program code comprising computer-readable program code configured to; store in a first portion of a shared memory a first unique identifier for a first processor of the plurality of processors, wherein the shared memory is accessible by the plurality of processors via a network fabric; traverse the network fabric comprising the plurality of processors; read, from a second portion of the shared memory, a second unique identifier for a second processor of the plurality of processors; determine, based on one or more criteria, a nominee identifier from among the first and second unique identifiers; store the nominee identifier in a register in the first portion of the shared memory, wherein the nominee identifier is read from the register by one of the plurality of processors; and elect the master processor that corresponds to the nominee identifier. - View Dependent Claims (9, 10, 11, 12, 13)
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14. A system for electing a master processor from a plurality of processors, comprising:
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a first processor of the plurality of processors; a second processor of the plurality of processors; a shared memory that is accessible by the plurality of processors via a network fabric, the shared memory comprising; a first portion storing a first unique identifier for the first processor, and a second portion storing a second unique identifier for the second processor, wherein the first processor is configured to read from the second portion the second unique identifier and determine, based on one or more criteria, a nominee identifier from among the first and second unique identifiers, wherein the first processor is configured to store the nominee identifier in a register in the first portion of the shared memory, wherein the nominee identifier is read from the register by one of the plurality of processors, and wherein at least one of the plurality of processors elect the master processor that corresponds to the nominee identifier. - View Dependent Claims (15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20)
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Specification