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Abstract

An apparatus for accelerated Fiber Channel protocol handshaking and data exchange involves dividing a Fiber Channel arbitrated loop architecture up into a plurality of arbitrated subloops, each of which arbitrates locally using the same fundamentals as the Fiber Channel arbitration protocol but with some slight modifications which do not affect the compatibility of standard Fiber Channel nodes. Each subloop is coupled to a hub port which contains a state machine which does switching function and fill word generation to implement the accelerated protocol by using a plurality of switching, fill word generation and token passing rules. The state machine in each hub port is coupled to its local subloop and to its neighboring hub ports through a single TDMA bus which has timeslots dedicated to carrying broadcast loop and return loop traffic and control token traffic. In some embodiments, the hub ports are coupled to their neighboring hub ports by separate broadcast and return loops and a control loop used for token passing. The accelerated Fiber Channel Arbitrated Loop protocol is carried out by the distributed intelligence of state machines in each hub port which achieve acceleration in a Fiber Channel protocol by performing the following steps: allowing simultaneus local arbitration in all subloops; notifying the local arbitration winner on a subloop coupled to a hub port when an ARB token arrives at that hub port; broadcasting an OPN primitive to all hub ports and subloops to start the process of finding the subloop upon which the destination node is located; identifying the subloop upon which the destination node is found; establishing switching connections to connect the subloop on which the source node is found to the subloop on which the destination node is found and bypassing all subloops upon which neither the source nor destination node is found; completing a data transfer from the source node to the destination node and closing the connection between the source node subloop and the destination node subloop.

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First Claim