Patent ID: 7415565

Claim:
A storage system comprising: one or more memory sections, including one or more memory devices including storage locations that store data, and a memory section controller that provides addresses to the memory devices, the addresses identifying storage locations for a memory device, wherein the memory devices use the provided addresses to perform a function selected from the set of reading out and writing data to/from the memory devices; and one or more switches, comprising a configurable switch fabric, that receive a data request including a data block identifier and switch the data request to one or more of the memory sections determined by applying the data block identifier to an algorithm that selectively configures operation of the switch fabric, the data block identifier identifying a set of storage locations; wherein the memory sections to which the data request was switched forward the received data block identifier to its memory section controller which maps the data block identifier to a set of addresses for the storage locations identified by the data block identifier, and provides the set of addresses to one or more of the memory section's memory devices.