Patent ID: 7752346

Claim:
A method for routing a plurality of transaction packets in a data processing system having a plurality of devices coupled to a switched fabric, the method comprising: assigning a routing identifier that is unique to each device; inserting a first routing identifier in a first transaction packet that is sent from a first device, wherein the first transaction packet has a modified PCI-Express format that replaces the bus-device-function (BDF) number field in a standard PCI-Express format with a 16-bit universal routing identifier (URID) field, wherein the first routing identifier is inserted in the URID field as the 16-bit URID; receiving the first transaction packet containing the first routing identifier by a second device; comparing the first routing identifier against a routing database having a plurality of data entries stored in the second device; and routing the first transaction packet through a predetermined port in the second device based on the result of the comparing.