Patent ID: 8281054

Claim:
A method operable in a switching device adapted to couple with a Serial Attached SCSI Serial Advanced Technology Attachment Tunneling Protocol initiator (SAS/STP initiator device) and adapted to couple with a plurality of Serial Advanced Technology Attachment (SATA) storage devices, the method comprising: receiving, by the switching device, a Direct Memory Access (DMA) SETUP Frame Information Structure (FIS) from a SATA storage device, wherein the DMA SETUP FIS specifies a maximum size of data to be transferred from the SAS/STP initiator device to the storage device before another DMA SETUP FIS is received from the SATA storage device; and transmitting, from the switching device, a plurality of new DMA SETUP FISs to the SAS/STP initiator device, wherein each new DMA SETUP FIS specifies a subcount size of data to be transferred from the SAS/STP initiator device to the SATA storage device that is less than the maximum size of data to be transferred, and wherein the sum of the subcount size of data of each new DMA SETUP FIS is not greater than the maximum size of data.