Patent ID: 7502873

Claim:
A method of facilitating input/output processing of a processing environment, said method comprising: obtaining by an input/output communications adapter of the processing environment a transport control word, said transport control word including a count of the total amount of data being transferred, an address of a descriptor control block to be sent to a control unit of the processing environment, in which the descriptor control block includes a plurality of input/output commands to be executed, an address of a list that informs the input/output communications adapter where to store or fetch data received from or transmitted to the control unit, and a location in memory where to store ending status from the control unit, said ending status being directly accessible by an operating system of the processing environment; forwarding from the input/output communications adapter to a control unit the descriptor control block that includes the plurality of input/output commands as one entity, wherein the forwarding includes forwarding from the input/output communications adapter to the control unit the descriptor control block including the plurality of input/output commands in a single communication; and executing by the control unit the plurality of input/output commands to perform one or more input/output operations, wherein the executing is performed absent a tracking by the input/output communications adapter of state relative to the individual input/output commands of the plurality of input/output commands being executed by the control unit.