Controlling Shared Memory

• US 20120324038A1
• Filed: 08/30/2012
• Published: 12/20/2012
• Est. Priority Date: 02/28/2011
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: Chen, Ying, Li, Yan, Teng, Qiming, Wang, Huayong
• Granted Patent: US 9,356,887 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 709/213
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 15/167 using a common memory, e.g. mailbox
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/544 Buffers; Shared memory; Pipes
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 49/901 using storage descriptor, e.g. read or write pointers

Abstract

In view of the characteristics of distributed applications, the present invention proposes a technical solution for applying a shared memory on an NIC comprising: a shared memory configured to provide shared storage space for a task of a distributed application, and a microcontroller. Furthermore, the present invention provides a computer device that includes the above-mentioned NIC, a method for controlling a read/write operation on a shared memory of a NIC, and a method for invoking the NIC. The use of the technical solution provided in the present invention bypasses the processing of network protocol stack, avoids the time delay introduced by the network protocol stack. The present invention does not need to perform TCP/IP encapsulation on the data packet, thus greatly saving additional packet header and packet tail overheads generated from the TCP/IP layer data encapsulation.

Claims

1. A method for controlling a read/write operation on a shared memory of a network interface card, wherein said shared memory is configured to provide shared storage for tasks of a distributed application, and said shared memory is accessed by a plurality of computing nodes executing a same task, said method comprising:

determining whether a local network interface card is configured with a shared memory supporting said read/write operation; and

performing the read/write operation to the shared memory on the local network interface card when the local network interface card is configured with the shared memory supporting said read/write operation.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the step of determining whether the local network interface card is configured with the shared memory supporting said read/write operation comprises:

determining whether the local network interface card is configured with the shared memory according to a state switch on the network interface card.

3. The method of claim 2, wherein the step of determining whether the local network interface card is configured with the shared memory supporting said read/write operation further comprises:

determining whether the shared memory configured on the local network interface card supports the read/write operation according to a task identification code stored on the shared memory on the local network interface card if the local network interface card is configured with the shared memory.

4. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

requesting a shared memory on a remote network interface card to perform the read/write operation when there is no shared memory supporting said read/write operation configured on the local network interface card.

5. The method of claim 4, wherein if said read/write operation is a write operation, then said step of requesting a shared memory on a remote network interface card to perform the read/write operation further comprises:

transmitting data to be written to the shared memory on the remote network interface card.

6. The method of claim 4, wherein if the read/write operation is a read operation, then said step of requesting a shared memory on a remote network interface card to perform the read/write operation further comprises:

transmitting a data read request to the shared memory on the remote network interface card.

7. The method of claim 1, wherein said network interface card further comprises a network interface card memory, and wherein the step of performing the read/write operation on the shared memory on the local network interface card further comprises:

performing the read/write operation on the shared memory on the local network interface card through a buffer of the memory of the local network interface card.

8. The method of claim 1, wherein the step of performing the read/write operation on the shared memory on the local network interface card further comprises:

directly performing said read/write operation between the shared memory on the local network interface card and a program buffer outside the local network interface card.

9. The method of claim 1, further comprises:

performing physical layer encapsulation on the data to be written if said read/write operation is a write operation.

10. The method of claim 1, further comprises:

performing physical layer encapsulation on a program buffer address of the program buffer into which the data to be read out is to be written if said read/write operation is a read operation.

11. A method for invoking a network interface card, the method comprising:

providing a program buffer of a distributed application;

invoking a language runtime through a dedicated interface on the language runtime;

invoking a device driver module to perform physical layer encapsulation; and

controlling a read/write operation on a shared memory of the network interface card by a method comprising;

determining whether a local network interface card is configured with a shared memory supporting said read/write operation; and

performing the read/write operation to the shared memory on the local network interface card when the local network interface card is configured with the shared memory supporting said read/write operation;

wherein said shared memory is configured to provide shared storage for tasks of a distributed application; and

wherein said shared memory is accessed by a plurality of computing nodes executing a same task.