Patent ID: 8176218

Claim:
A storage controller adapted for processing I/O requests, the storage controller comprising: a soft-path I/O processor adapted to process any I/O request received by the storage controller, the soft-path I/O processor further comprising a programmable processor (CPU) and associated program memory coupled with the CPU for storing programmed instructions fetched and executed by the CPU to process a received I/O request; a fast-path I/O processor adapted to process a subset of I/O requests received by the storage controller, the fast-path I/O processor further comprising circuits configured to process the subset of I/O requests without intervention by the soft-path I/O processor; and a content parsing circuit coupled with the soft-path I/O processor and coupled with the fast-path I/O processor and coupled to receive an I/O request from an initiator device coupled with the storage controller, the content parsing circuit adapted to parse an I/O request as it is received, wherein the content parsing circuit is further adapted to selectively route the I/O request to the soft-path I/O processor or to the fast-path I/O processor based on information parsed in the I/O request, wherein the content parsing circuit is further adapted to route the I/O request concurrently with receipt of the I/O request.