Patent ID: 7925802

Claim:
A peripheral-sharing multi-computer system comprising: a plurality of processor cores, each processor core comprising: a processor for executing instructions and generating requests to access peripherals; a main memory for storing instructions executed and data used by the processor; a local peripheral bus that carries the requests to access virtualized peripherals; a plurality of interconnect interface devices, coupled to the plurality of processor cores, comprising hardware functioning as virtual endpoints for the requests to access virtualized peripherals from the processor, wherein the virtual peripherals appear to be on the local peripheral bus from a point of view of software executing on the processor; an interconnect fabric coupled to the plurality of interconnect interface devices and carrying interconnect packets containing the requests to access peripherals generated by the plurality of processing cores; a plurality of remote peripheral buses; a plurality of remote peripherals on the plurality of remote peripheral buses, the plurality of remote peripherals comprising at least two of: a Network Interface Card (NIC), a hard disk controller for accessing a hard disk, a Basic Input Output System (BIOS) memory, and a console; a plurality of device managers, coupled to the interconnect fabric, for sending the requests to access peripherals contained in the interconnect packets over the plurality of remote peripheral buses to the plurality of remote peripherals, and for receiving reply data from the plurality of remote peripherals and sending the reply data in interconnect packets to the plurality of interconnect devices to respond to the requests to access peripherals, whereby remote peripherals are accessed remotely through the interconnect fabric and virtualized peripherals appear to be on the local peripheral bus from the point of view of software executing on the processor.