Patent ID: 7543109

Claim:
A method for caching data in a blade computing complex comprising the steps of: providing a storage blade, comprising: a disk operative to store a plurality of pages of data; and a cache memory operative to store at least one of the pages; providing a processor blade, comprising: a first memory area configured to store at least one of the pages; and a second memory area configured to store an address of each of the pages and a hint value that is assigned to each of the pages; storing an address of each of the pages in the second memory area; assigning a hint value to each of the pages, the hint value comprising one of: likely to be accessed, may be accessed, and unlikely to be accessed, wherein assigning the hint value comprises the steps of: counting the number of accesses to each of the pages; determining, for each of the pages, a relative access value by comparing the number of accesses to each of the pages with the number of accesses to each other page; determining whether a page fault has occurred and the faulted page is the least-recently-used page; determining whether the page is pinned in the first memory area; assigning a hint value to the page, wherein the hint value is based on at least one of: the relative access value, the determination of whether a page fault has occurred and the faulted page is the least-recently-used page, and the determination of whether the page is pinned in the first memory area; transmitting the hint value to the storage blade; and storing the page associated with the hint value in the cache memory, wherein storing the page comprises the steps of: determining whether the page is stored in cache memory; storing the page in cache memory in response to determining that the page is not stored in cache memory and that the hint value is one of likely to be accessed and may be accessed; and removing the page from cache memory in response to determining that the page is stored in cache memory and that the hint value is unlikely to be accessed.