Non-blocking buffered inter-machine data transfer with acknowledgment

• US 20060294193A1
• Filed: 08/23/2006
• Published: 12/28/2006
• Est. Priority Date: 03/24/2003
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Bush, Eric N.
• Granted Patent: US 8,463,937 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 709/213
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/544 Buffers; Shared memory; Pipes
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/60 Scheduling or organising the servicing of application requests, e.g. requests for application data transmissions using the analysis and optimisation of the required network resources admission control or resource allocation H04L47/70

Abstract

A system, method and data structures for transmitting batched data over a network in asynchronous, non-blocking operations, with acknowledgements returned to the senders. Each machine includes a sender subsystem and a receiver subsystem. Transmission items corresponding to data to be sent are buffered until a send is triggered, at which time the transmission items are sorted according to their destinations and sent as a GUID-identified batch to each destination by a send thread. At each receiver, a receiving thread adds descriptions of the data to a receive list, which a transfer thread processes when triggered. The transfer thread sends the corresponding data to a recipient program, and sends GUID-identified acknowledgements corresponding to each GUID back to the originating senders. An acknowledge thread at each originating sender buffers the acknowledgements, and when triggered, a cleanup thread uses the GUID to identify which batched transmissions were received.

Claims

1. In a computing environment, a system comprising:

a sender subsystem of a first machine, the sender subsystem maintaining a data structure of transmission items to send, and a send mechanism that sends data;

a receiver subsystem of a second machine configured to receive data from the sender subsystem of the first machine, the receiver subsystem maintaining a receive data structure of information corresponding to data sent by the sender subsystem; and

the sender subsystem configured to detect a send trigger event and to process the transmission items into per-destination data items, the send mechanism sending the per-destination data items and corresponding data to destination machines, including a selected data item and its corresponding data to the receiver subsystem of the second machine.

2. The system of claim 1 wherein the transmission items are tracked by the sender subsystem in a transmission item list, wherein the transmission item list is closed when the sender subsystem detects the trigger event, and further comprising a new transmission item list for tracking subsequently submitted transmission items.

3. The system of claim 1 further comprising a data item destination buffer at the first machine, and wherein the sender subsystem maintains the per-destination data items in the data item destination buffer.

4. The system of claim 1 wherein each transmission item specifies at least one destination machine and at least one set of data to send to each destination machine, and wherein in at least one transmission item, each set of data is specified via a data pointer and size information.

5. The system of claim 1 wherein at least two transmission items are submitted to the sender subsystem in a single call from a data generator.

6. The system of claim 1 wherein the sender subsystem comprises a process having a send thread that detects the send trigger event, and wherein the send trigger event corresponds to a time limit being reached, a threshold amount of data being achieved, or a priority level being detected, or any combination of a time limit being reached, a threshold amount of data being achieved, or a priority level being detected.

7. The system of claim 1 wherein each per-destination data item has a unique identifier associated therewith, and wherein the receiver subsystem returns an acknowledgement corresponding to the received per-destination data item to the sender subsystem, the acknowledgement including the unique identifier.

8. The system of claim 1 wherein the receiver subsystem returns an acknowledgement corresponding to the received per-destination data item to the sender subsystem, and further comprising an acknowledgement handler that places data corresponding to the returned acknowledgement into an acknowledgement data structure.

9. The system of claim 11 further comprising a cleanup mechanism, wherein the cleanup mechanism accesses the acknowledgement data structure to determine which per-destination data items have been successfully received by a destination.

11. The system of claim 1 wherein the receiver subsystem of the second machine receives the selected per-destination data item and its corresponding data, and returns an acknowledgement corresponding to the received per-destination data item to the first machine.

10. The system of claim 21 wherein the cleanup mechanism operates in response to a cleanup trigger event corresponding to a time limit being reached, a threshold amount of data being achieved, or a priority level being detected, or any combination of a time limit being reached, a threshold amount of data being achieved, or a priority level being detected.

12. In a computing environment, a method comprising:

accumulating transmission items to send, each transmission item specifying at least one destination machine and at least one set of data to send to each destination machine;

detecting a send trigger event, and in response, processing the transmission items into per-destination data items, each per-destination data item identifying each set of data to send to a destination machine;

associating a unique identifier with each per-destination data item;

sending a transmission for each per-destination data item to the destination machine identified in that per-destination data item, the transmission comprising the unique identifier associated with that per-destination data item and each set of data corresponding to that per-destination data item; and

receiving an acknowledgement from each destination machine that received the transmission sent thereto, the acknowledgment comprising the unique identifier.

13. The method of claim 12 further comprising, tracking the accumulated the transmission items in a transmission item list.

16. The method of claim 12 further comprising, placing data corresponding to returned acknowledgements into an acknowledgement data structure, and accessing the acknowledgement data structure to determine which per-destination data items have been successfully received by a destination.

17. The method of claim 16 further comprising, locating a unique identifier corresponding to a selected acknowledgement in the acknowledgement data structure, freeing data based on the unique identifier, tracking the acknowledgements in the acknowledgement data structure, closing the acknowledgement data structure on a cleanup trigger event, and providing a new acknowledgement data structure for tracking subsequently returned acknowledgements.

18. The method of claim 17 further comprising detecting the cleanup trigger event upon a time limit being reached, a threshold amount of data being achieved, or a priority level being detected, or any combination of a time limit being reached, a threshold amount of data being achieved, or a priority level being detected.

19. The method of claim 12 further comprising, at a specified destination machine, receiving a data transmission from the sender and placing information corresponding to the transmission into a receive data structure.

14. The method of claim 32 further comprising receiving at least two transmission items in a single call from a data generator.

15. The method of claim 32 wherein detecting the send trigger event includes testing for the send trigger event, and wherein testing for the send trigger event comprises a) determining whether a time limit is reached, b) determining whether a threshold amount of data is achieved or c) determining whether a transmission item indicates that at least part of its corresponding data comprises high-priority data, or any combination of a), b) or c) or a), b) and c).

20. A computer-readable medium having computer-executable instructions, which when executed perform steps, comprising:

detecting a send trigger event;

sorting a plurality of data items to send to a plurality of destination receivers based on destination information associated with each data item;

sending each of the data items to its associated destination receiver, including batching any data items for transmission that are associated with a common destination receiver; and

receiving an acknowledgement from each destination receiver that received the transmission sent thereto.