Patent ID: 8495259

Claim:
A data storage system comprising: a controller comprising a plurality of hardware engines; a data store configured to store a plurality of control blocks selectively arranged in one of a plurality of predefined chains, each control block designed to control a hardware operation in one of the plurality of hardware engines; each said predefined chain defining a sequence of operations; said control blocks being selectively linked to a plurality of other control blocks, providing parallel dispatch of controls applied to respective hardware engines running on different steps for the same function; a resource handle structure configured to select one said predefined chain based upon a particular characteristic of the system, each said predefined chain configured to minimize hardware and firmware interaction and to implement a particular performance path to maximize performance; and a plurality of said performance paths implementing a plurality of predefined redundant array of inexpensive drives (RAID) functions including RAID read and RAID write operations utilizing write cache and dual controller configurations.