Patent ID: 7917694
Filing Date: 2011-03-29
Classification: G06F

Abstract:
1. In a data storage system having bulk storage devices that can store a body of data over separately accessed stripes, each stripe including a plurality of data blocks, and a cache memory that stores predetermined data blocks, a method of cache maintenance, comprising the steps of: providing a ternary content addressable memory (TCAM) with a processor coupled thereto; tracking a block count for each active stripe with the processor and TCAM, the block count for each active stripe being the number of data blocks belonging to the same stripe that are stored in the cache memory, the tracking of the block counts including storing a plurality of different tables in the TCAM, at least two such tables including a first table having TCAM entries searchable by stripe identifier values to identify the block count for all active stripes, and a second table having TCAM entries searchable by stripe identifier values to identify addresses of data blocks of the active stripes that are stored in cache memory; and including at least one array that tracks the number of stripes having a given block count value.