Patent ID: 8200880

Claim:
An I/O equipment sharing system comprising: a plurality of CPUs; a plurality of I/O equipment; a plurality of upstream PCI Express-bridges coupled to the plurality of CPUs; and a plurality of downstream PCI Express-bridges coupled to the plurality of I/O equipment and coupled to the plurality of upstream PCI Express-bridges through a network, wherein: each of the plurality of upstream PCI Express-bridges includes a first identifier-setting unit for setting an identifier and a first filtering unit for carrying out filtering by the set identifier; each of the plurality of downstream PCI Express-bridges includes a second identifier-setting unit for setting an identifier and a second filtering unit for carrying out filtering by the set identifier; the first and second identifier-setting units set the same identifier in the upstream and downstream PCI Express-bridges which communicate to each other; the upstream PCI Express-bridge communicates with the downstream PCI Express-bridge by a frame to which the same identifier is added; the first identifier-setting unit sets the identifier based on a unique value allocated to the upstream PCI Express-bridge; and the second identifier-setting unit sets the same identifier using the identifier set by the first identifier-setting unit, wherein each of the upstream PCI Express-bridges collates a first I/O equipment information delivered from the plurality of downstream PCI Express-bridges with a second I/O equipment information set to the upstream PCI Express-bridge, and when the I/O equipment specified by the first I/O equipment information is included in the I/O equipment specified by the second I/O equipment information, each of the upstream PCI Express-bridges sends a frame including the identifier of the upstream PCI Express-bridge to the downstream PCI Express-bridge connected to the I/O equipment specified by the first I/O equipment information.