Patent ID: 8599863

Claim:
In a network system having compute nodes connected by a switched interconnect fabric, a plurality of switching nodes each comprising: one or more processors; a bus fabric coupled to the one or more processors; a fabric switch coupled to the switched interconnect fabric, wherein the fabric switch is configured for inspecting a data packet routing header of a packet and causing the packet to be routed to its destination within the switched interconnect fabric based only on information contained within said routing header; and a plurality of protocol specific personality modules each coupled in parallel between the bus fabric and the fabric switch, wherein at least two of the protocol specific personality modules are configured in accordance with different protocols with respect to each other and wherein each one of the protocol specific personality modules includes: a routing header processor that inspects data packets received thereby and adds a routing header for data packets destined for entering the switched interconnect fabric and removes a routing header from data packets received from the switched interconnect fabric, wherein said adding and removing of the routing header is performed based on a protocol-dependent basis.