Patent ID: 7418556

Claim:
A method for communicating between a first node and a second node of an interconnect system, each node having a plurality of processors and an interconnect chipset, the method comprising: issuing a processor request from a processor of the plurality of processors in the first node; passing the processor request to the second node via a first scalability port of the first node, the first scalability port configured to communicate directly with a second scalability port of the second node when the system is a two-node system consisting of the first and second nodes, the first scalability port further configured to communicate with other nodes of the system through a protocol engine when the system is a multi-node system comprising the first node, the second node, and one or more other nodes, where the protocol engine is a part of the first node; starting an access of a local memory in response to the processor request, and identifying the location of the contents of the object of the processor request in either the local memory or a processor cache of a processor in the plurality of processors in the second node.