Importance

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Abstract

A switched fabric, instead of a shared bus, establishes a data transfer path between a host device and a storage device. The host device accesses data stored on the storage device, but with data transfer speed and bandwidth advantages of a switched fabric architecture over a shared bus architecture. The components of a switch in the switched fabric are integrated together in a single integrated circuit, so as to have about the same size and cost as the prior art shared bus architecture. Additional storage devices and/or host devices may be connected to the switch and data transfer paths established between any host device and any storage device, but not between two storage devices. Another switch may be connected between host and storage devices to form redundant data transfer paths therebetween.

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First Claim