Patent ID: 6948004

Claim:
A host-fabric adapter, comprising: at least one Micro-Engine arranged to establish connections and support data transfer operations, via a switched fabric, in response to work requests that cause instructions in a form of work queue elements “WQEs” posted from a host system for said data transfer operations; a work queue element “WQE” hardware assist “HWA” mechanism arranged to determine the starting address of each work queue element “WQE” based on queue pair (QP) context information needed for said Micro-Engine (ME) to process work requests for said data transfer operations; a transport engine which contains a plurality of work queue pairs (WQPs) in which work requests in a form of work queue elements “WQEs” are posted to describe data transfer operations and locations of data to be moved for processing and/or transportation via said switched fabric; wherein said work queue pairs (WOPs) each comprises: a Send Queue (SQ) utilized as an “initiator” which requests normal message sends to remote Virtual Interfaces (VIs) of a remote system, remote direct memory access (RDMA) reads which request messages to be read from specific memory locations of said remote system, via said switched fabric, and remote direct memory access (RDMA) writes which request messages to be written onto specific memory locations of said remote system, via said switched fabric; and a Receive Queue utilized as a “responder” which receives requests for messages from normal sends, RDMA reads and RDMA writes from said remote system, via said switched fabric; and wherein said Micro-Engine and said work queue element “WQE” hardware assist “HWA” mechanism are configured in accordance with the “InfiniBand™ Specification”, and implemented as part of an Application Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC).