Patent ID: 7606933

Claim:
A method for exchanging data between compute nodes of a computer system comprising: a plurality of compute nodes interconnected by an inter-node communication network each of the compute nodes operable to execute an application process, having an independent address space and comprising: a local packetized interconnect, a network interface coupled to the local packetized interconnect and the inter-node communication network, at least one data processor coupled to the local packetized interconnect; and, a memory system accessible to the data processor; the method comprising tunneling data from the sending compute node to the receiving compute node by: placing a local packetized interconnect packet on the local packetized interconnect of the sending compute node; at the network interface of the sending compute node receiving the local packetized interconnect packet and encapsulating the local packetized interconnect packet in an inter-node communication network packet addressed to the receiving compute node by placing the local packetized interconnect packet in a data payload of the inter-node communication network packet; dispatching the inter-node communication network packet to the receiving compute node by way of the inter-node communication network; at the network interface of the receiving compute node receiving the inter-node communication network packet and extracting the local packetized interconnect packet from the inter-node communication network packet; and, placing the extracted packet onto the local packetized interconnect of the receiving compute node; wherein, when the local packetized interconnect packet is on the local packetized interconnect of the sending compute node, portions of the local packetized interconnect packet other than any addresses and any check values are the same as the corresponding portions of the local packetized interconnect packet when the local packetized interconnect packet is on the local packetized interconnect of the receiving compute node.