Patent ID: 9336166
Filing Date: 2016-05-10
CPC Classification: G06F

Claim Text:
1. An apparatus comprising: a burst buffer appliance adapted for coupling between a computer system and a file system; the burst buffer appliance comprising: a first memory; at least one additional memory; and a controller; the first memory and the at least one additional memory comprising respective portions of a high-speed memory of the burst buffer appliance with the high-speed memory having a substantially lower access time than the file system; the controller comprising a remote direct memory access module of the burst buffer appliance; the controller being configured to detect a remote direct memory access operation between a given compute node of the computer system and the additional memory, and to execute the detected remote direct memory access operation in a manner that bypasses utilization of an operating system associated with the first memory; wherein the operating system associated with the first memory comprises a primary operating system of the burst buffer appliance; wherein bypassing utilization of the operating system associated with the first memory comprises moving data from a host channel adaptor of the remote direct memory access module to the additional memory without utilizing computational resources of a central processing unit on which the primary operating system executes; wherein the controller comprises a virtual machine arranged between the host channel adaptor and the additional memory; wherein the virtual machine is configured to identify a remote direct memory access operation directed to an address space of the additional memory and to control flow of data associated with that operation between the host channel adaptor and the additional memory; and wherein the virtual machine comprises a buffer configured to store data passing between the host channel adaptor and the additional memory, and a flow control mechanism associated with the buffer.