Patent ID: 7958295

Claim:
A Serial Attached Small Computer System Interface expander device having a plurality of phys, the SAS expander device to establish connections between phys, the SAS expander device comprising: a microprocessor executing instructions to cause the microprocessor to implement a search engine and an arbiter, the search engine and the arbiter to perform the following actions: the search engine to compare arbitration priority keys of a source phy subset of the plurality of phys to identify a maximum arbitration priority key having an index position indicating a highest priority request source phy and to compare arbitration priority keys of a target phy subset from the plurality of phys to identify a minimum arbitration priority key having an index position indicating a lowest priority request source phy; the arbiter to establish a connection between the highest priority request source phy of the source phy subset and the lowest priority source phy of the target phy subset; the search engine and the arbiter to iteratively perform the following actions until all connections between phys have been established: the search engine to mask off the highest priority request source phy and the lowest priority target phy subsequent the establishment of the connection therebetween, the masking off of the highest priority request source phy producing a reduced source phy subset, the masking off of the lowest priority target phy producing a reduced target phy subset; the search engine to compare arbitration priority keys of the reduced source phy subset to identify, for the reduced source phy subset, a maximum arbitration priority key having an index position indicating a highest priority request source phy and to compare arbitration keys of the reduced target phy subset to identify, for the reduced target subset, a minimum arbitration priority key having an index position indicating a lowest priority request source phy; and the arbiter to establish a connection between the highest priority request source phy of the reduced source phy subest and the lowest priority target phy of the reduced target subset.