Patent ID: 8751655

Claim:
A data processing system, comprising: a plurality of processor nodes; and an intermediate device coupled between the plurality of processor nodes and an interconnect network, wherein the intermediate device comprises a collective acceleration unit, wherein the collective acceleration unit comprises a storage device; wherein the collective acceleration unit is configured to receive an input collective packet for a collective operation from a neighbor node within a collective tree, wherein the input collective packet comprises a tree identifier and an input data field and wherein the collective tree comprises a plurality of sub trees; wherein the collective acceleration unit is configured to map the tree identifier to an index within the collective acceleration unit, wherein the index identifies a portion of resources within the collective acceleration unit and is associated with a set of neighbor nodes in a given sub tree within the collective tree, and wherein for each neighbor node the collective acceleration unit stores destination information; and wherein the collective acceleration unit is configured to perform an operation on the input data field using the portion of resources to effect the collective operation.