Importance

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Abstract

The present invention is an apparatus for adapting transmissions between an industry standard data bus of a host computer having a host memory and a fiber channel coupled between said host computer and a peripheral storage subsystem having at least one disk drive, which apparatus comprises an interface logic coupled between the industry standard bus and a local bus of the apparatus; a buffer memory coupled to the local bus; a multiplexor/control device coupled to the local bus and being disposed for transmitting therethrough address and data; a fiber channel controller disposed for formatting header and data structures that meet fiber channel protocol, which controller is coupled to the multiplexor/control; a gigabit link module disposed for converting the header and data structures from a parallel format to a serial format and being coupled between the fiber channel controller and the fiber channel; a microprocessor disposed for providing service requests from the host to read and write data from the host memory to and from the peripheral storage subsystem via the buffer memory, the microprocessor is coupled to a processor bus; and, a bus control device coupled between the processor bus and the local bus for providing service requests of the interface logic, the fiber channel controller and the microprocessor, and for arbitrating control of the local bus.

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First Claim