Patent ID: 7409472

Claim:
A device controller to be operated in such an environment that an input/output request of an application provided in a host is distributed to a plurality of device drivers for taking a load balance through a processing distribution driver in the host and issuing the input/output request to which each of the device drivers is allocated, the device controller comprising: channel adapters, including: a detecting table storing information including a start address and a data length for each of the input/output requests received from the host; and a detecting unit calculating a start address of a sequential input/output request based on the information stored in the detecting table when a new input/output request is received and determining whether the new input/output request is a sequential input/output request by comparing the calculated start address with the start address of the new input/output request, wherein the detecting unit calculates, as the start address of the sequential input/output request, a plurality of start addresses having a value obtained by sequentially multiplying a data length by 1 to the number n of channel paths and adding a value thus obtained for a start address of an input/output request registered in the detecting table when the number of the channel paths with the host is n, and recognizes the sequential input/output request if it is decided that any of the start addresses is identical to the start address of the new input/output request.