Hybrid transport—application network fabric apparatus

• US 9,736,052 B2
• Filed: 08/20/2014
• Issued: 08/15/2017
• Est. Priority Date: 12/14/2007
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Nant Holdings IP, LLC (NantWorks, LLC)
• Original Assignee: Nant Holdings IP, LLC (NantWorks, LLC)
• Inventors: Wittenschlaeger, Thomas
• Primary Examiner(s): Chea, Philip
• Assistant Examiner(s): Ma, Wing
• Application Number:
  US14/464,159
• Publication Number:
  US 20140359094A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,091 Days
• Field of Search: 709221, 709213
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/54 Interprogram communication
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/0823 characterised by the purposes of a change of settings, e.g. optimising configuration for enhancing reliability for optimising operational conditions of wireless networks H04W24/02
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 45/00 Routing or path finding of packets in data switching networks routing or path finding in wireless networks H04W40/00
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 45/02 Topology update or discovery

Abstract

A hybrid routing—application network fabric apparatus is presented where a fabric apparatus has multiple apparatus components or resources that can be dedicated to one or more application topologies. The apparatus can receive a topology image definition file describing an application topology and the apparatus can dedicate its local components for use with the application topology. The apparatus can dedicate general purpose processing cores, dedicated routing cores, data channels, networking ports, memory or other local resources to the application topology. Contemplated application topologies include routing topologies, computation topologies, database topologies, storage topologies, or other types of application topologies. Furthermore, application topologies can be optimized by modeling or simulating the topologies on a network fabric.

Claims

1. A hybrid routing—

computation fabric card apparatus, comprising;

a router comprising a plurality of routing cores and configured to route data among a plurality of network ports by executing software instructions according to a routing topology on at least one dedicated routing core from the plurality of the routing cores;

a processor coupled with the router via at least one data channel and comprising a plurality of general purpose (GP) cores, the processor configured to execute software instructions according to an application topology on at least one dedicated GP core from the plurality of GP cores;

a topology manager configured to coordinate the routing topology and the application topology with at least one other fungible hybrid routing—

computation fabric card apparatus by dedicating at least one of the plurality of GP cores, the plurality of routing cores, and the plurality of networking ports to the routing topology and the application topology; and

an optimizing agent configured to;

observe performance metrics associated with at least one of the routing topology and application topology;

estimate a performance efficiency with respect to at least one of the performance metrics based on a new configuration of the plurality of GP cores and the plurality of routing cores dedicated to the at least one of the routing topology and application topology; and

cause reconfiguration of the plurality of GP cores and the plurality of routing cores that are dedicated to the at least one of the routing topology and application topology according to the new configuration upon the performance efficiency satisfying trigger criteria.

2. The apparatus of claim 1, further comprising a line card comprising the router and the processor.

3. The apparatus of claim 2, wherein the line card further comprises the optimization agent.

4. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein the router comprises a routing module card.

5. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein the processor comprises a processor module card.

6. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein the at least one data channel comprises an internal data channel between the router and the processor.

7. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein the at least one data channel comprises multiple channels.

8. The apparatus of claim 7, wherein the multiple channels include at least one of the following:

a PCIe interface, a SERDES interface, an Ethernet interface, and a USB interface.

9. The apparatus of claim 1, further comprising a data channel switch configured to select channels from among the multiple channels.

10. The apparatus of claim 1, further comprising a plurality of networking ports.

11. The apparatus of claim 10, wherein the new configuration comprises at least some of the plurality of networking ports to be dedicated to the at least one of the routing topology and the application topology.

12. The apparatus of claim 10, wherein the plurality of networking ports comprises optic fiber connections.

13. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein the routing topology comprises a global fabric routing topology.

14. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein the application topology comprises a global fabric application topology.

15. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein the performance metrics comprise local metrics relative to the router and the processor.

16. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein the performance metrics comprise global fabric metrics.

17. The apparatus of claim 16, wherein the global fabric metrics comprise aggregated local metrics from a different apparatus.

18. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein the router comprises at least one computer chip form factor package that includes at least some of the plurality of routing cores.

19. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein the processor comprises at least one computer chip form factor package that includes at least some of the plurality of GP cores.

20. The apparatus of claim 1, further comprising a memory storing at least one topology image representative of the at least one of the routing topology and the application topology.

21. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein the application topology comprises at least one of the following:

a storage topology, a computation topology, a simulation topology, a mirrored topology, a shadowed topology, and a modeling topology.