Parallel mapping of client partition memory to multiple physical adapters

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-9870242-B2
Application number	US-201414570878-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Dec 15, 2014
Priority date	Jun 14, 2013
Publication date	Jan 16, 2018
Grant date	Jan 16, 2018

Abstract

Techniques are disclosed for performing input/output (I/O) requests to two or more physical adapters in parallel. One method for performing an input/output (I/O) request includes mapping an address for at least a first page associated with a virtual I/O request to an entry in a virtual TCE table and identifying a plurality of physical adapters required to service the virtual I/O request. For each of the identified physical adapters, the entry in the virtual TCE table is mapped to an entry in a physical TCE table corresponding to the physical adapter. This method may also include, in parallel, issuing physical I/O requests to the physical adapters.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1. A method for performing an input/output (I/O) request, the method comprising:
mapping an address for at least a first page associated with a virtual I/O request to an entry in a virtual translation control entry (TCE) table;
identifying a plurality of physical adapters required to service the virtual I/O request;
upon determining, in at least one of the identified physical adapters, that an entry in a respective physical TCE table corresponding to the physical adapter is unavailable:
aborting the virtual I/O request, and
returning an error; and

upon determining, in each of the identified physical adapters, that an entry in the respective physical TCE table corresponding to the physical adapter is available, for each of the identified physical adapters:
in parallel, mapping the entry in the virtual TCE table to an entry in the respective physical TCE table corresponding to the physical adapter, and
in parallel, issuing a physical I/O request corresponding to each physical TCE table entry to the respective physical adapter.

2. The method of claim 1 , further comprising:
receiving, from each physical adapter, a response to the physical I/O request; and
invalidating each mapped entry in the physical TCE tables corresponding to the identified physical adapters.

3. The method of claim 2 , further comprising:
invalidating the mapped address for the first page in the virtual TCE table.

4. The method of claim 1 , wherein each the physical adapters performs the I/O request using the mapped entries in the corresponding physical TCE table.

5. The method of claim 1 , wherein a virtual adapter on a client guest OS maps the address for at least the first page associated with the virtual I/O request to the entry in the virtual TCE table.

6. The method of claim 1 , wherein a virtual adapter on a server guest O/S identifies the plurality of physical adapters required to service the virtual I/O request.

7. The method of claim 1 , wherein the I/O request is a request to read to or write from a block storage device.

Assignees

• IBM

Inventors

• Koch Andrew T
• Lucke Kyle A
• Rogness Nicholas J
• Royer Steven E

Classifications

• G06F2212/151

  Emulated environment, e.g. virtual machine · CPC title

• G06F2009/45579

  I/O management, e.g. providing access to device drivers or storage · CPC title

• G06F12/1036

  for multiple virtual address spaces, e.g. segmentation (G06F12/1045 takes precedence) · CPC title

• G06F9/45558

  Hypervisor-specific management and integration aspects · CPC title

• G06F12/10

  Address translation · CPC title