Patent ID: 7363389

Claim:
A channel adapter comprising: a host interface, the host interface operatively connected to a memory by a local bus, the memory containing at least one completion queue and at least one event queue; a link interface, the link interface operatively connected to a network; a packet processing engine, the packet processing engine moving data between the host interface and the link interface; a completion queue engine, the completion queue engine processing completion requests from the packet processing engine by writing to appropriate at least one of the at least one completion queue and at least one event queue; an address translation engine, the address translation engine translating a virtual address into a physical address of a translation protection table in the memory, the address translation engine comprises an inbound request processor and a request completion processor, the inbound request processor receiving a request for address translation of the virtual address, the request completion processor sending the physical address of the memory associated with the virtual address and retrieved from the translation protection table to at least one of the packet processing engine and the completion queue engine in response to the request, wherein the packet processing engine is not impacted by any address translation functionality, completion queue accesses, or event queue accesses thereby significantly enhancing the performance of the channel adapter.