Patent ID: 8103764

Claim:
A standalone cache unit for caching data operations requested from one or more networked data storage devices by one or more remote clients, the standalone cache unit comprising: a cache memory for caching data that is requested by a remote client; a payload memory for storing payload data for one or more packet flows; a packet processor coupled to the cache memory, the payload memory, and to one or more I/O ports for transparently splicing connections between the data storage devices and remote clients, where the packet processor comprises a pattern detection module configured to find a matching pattern by scanning a received packet for one or more predetermined trigger patterns and generating a direct memory address for the matching pattern in memory; and a host processor coupled to the packet processor and the payload memory, where the host processor uses the direct memory address to directly retrieve the matching pattern from memory and applies a cache policy profile to the matching pattern to make a caching decision for a data cache request associated with the matching pattern.