Patent ID: 7769928

Claim:
A data storage system for transferring data between a host computer/server and a bank of disk drives through a system interface, such system interface having: a plurality of storage processors, one portion of the storage processors having a user data port coupled to the host computer/server and another portion of the storage processors having a user data port coupled to the bank of disk drives; and, a packet switching network coupled to the plurality of storage processors for passing packets between the plurality storage processors, each one of the plurality of storage processors comprising: a protocol controller for converting packets between a format used by the plurality of storage processors and a format used by the packet switching network, such controller comprising: an interface section for passing packets providing atomic operation requests to the packet switching network through a Direct Single Access (DSA) section, having a pair of ports coupled to the packet switching network, for operation by another one or the same one of the storage processors and for performing atomic operations requests received from another one or the same one of the plurality of storage processors from the packet switching network, wherein each one of the storage processors includes a Central Processing Unit (CPU) section having a plurality of CPUs, each one of the CPUs being provided to perform a plurality of operations, one of such operations being a DSA request to the DSA section, where a DSA request is used by the CPU within one of the storage processors to access a memory in any one of the storage processors, wherein a first one of the CPUs is available to perform other ones of the operations after providing the DSA request to the DSA section while the DSA section executes the DSA request and wherein a second one of the CPUs initiates a second DSA request during execution of a first DSA request to the DSA section by the first one of the CPUs wherein the first CPU sends the first DSA request to a first one of the pair of ports coupled to the packet switching network while the second CPU concurrently sends the second DSA request to a second one of the pair of ports coupled to the packet switching network.