Patent ID: 8122201

Claim:
A method of communicating work requests within a storage device, comprising: providing a data record that contains information indicative of a work request that indicates an operation to be performed by a unit of the storage device; directly writing the data record from a first unit of the storage device to a second unit of the storage device that is selected to perform the operation indicated in the work request; writing the data record from the first unit to a global memory that is accessible by the first unit and by the second unit and is accessible by at least one other unit of the storage device that is different from the first unit and the second unit, wherein the global memory is separate from the first unit, the second unit and the at least one other unit; wherein, if the second unit completes the operation indicated in the work request of the data record stored in the second unit, the second unit purges the work request of the data record stored in the global memory after completing the operation; and wherein, if the second unit does not complete the operation indicated in the work request of the data record stored in the second unit in a predetermined amount of time, the other unit provides backup work request processing by accessing the work request of the data record stored in the global memory in response to the second unit not completing the operation after the predetermined amount of time and initiating processing of the work request.