Abstract: A novel storage router with an acceleration gate is disclosed. The storage router includes one or more network interfaces for receiving storage traffic and a hardware engine for processing data storage commands. The hardware engine transfers commands and data to target storage devices by means of more than one storage interface, the storage interfaces having unequal processing latencies. The hardware engine contains an acceleration gate for storing the number of outstanding commands to each storage interface on a per-target-device basis. If the target device is not idle, the hardware engine uses the acceleration gate count to automatically route commands to the lowest latency path with outstanding commands for the target device.

Abstract: A novel storage router with an acceleration gate is disclosed. The storage router includes one or more network interfaces for receiving storage traffic and a hardware engine for processing data storage commands. The hardware engine transfers commands and data to target storage devices by means of more than one storage interface, the storage interfaces having unequal processing latencies. The hardware engine contains an acceleration gate for storing the number of outstanding commands to each storage interface on a per-target-device basis. If the target device is not idle, the hardware engine uses the acceleration gate count to automatically route commands to the lowest latency path with outstanding commands for the target device.

Abstract: A system and method for accelerating iSCSI storage traffic on a TCP/IP network over Ethernet. Ethernet storage frames are classified and deconstructed entirely in hardware by the use of a frame correlation engine, a TCP frame dissector and a number of protocol engines, providing iSCSI command processing without the involvement of a network protocol stack or TCP offload engine.

Abstract: The present invention provides an improved disk drive carrier (10) for use in a disk storage system. The disk drive carrier includes a plurality of disk drives (11A, 11B) secured to a single printed circuit board (13), and a connector (14) with at least one input/output interface portion (22). In some aspects of the invention, the disk drives are ATA disk drives or Serial ATA disk drives. In other aspects of the invention, the disk drive carrier includes a single connector. In other aspects of the invention, the connector includes a bus portion (21), and in others, the bus portion (21) includes at least one I2C bus. Other aspects of the invention include non-volatile memory (15), power controlled circuitry (16), LEDs (23A, 23B, 24) and electrode-static discharge strips (17A, 17B, 17C). The present invention provides such a disk drive carrier compatible with industry-standard rack systems.

Abstract: The present invention provides an improved method of ensuring the integrity of command instructions exchanged between a host and an ATA device of an array of one or more ATA devices. The invention discloses a method of error detection for transfers of both control information and command information. The invention broadly includes the steps of: writing control information to one or more locations on the selected ATA device; reading the information stored at the corresponding locations; and comparing the control information to the information stored. Other aspects of the invention include writing command information to the ATA device; reading the information stored at the location to which the command information is written; and comparing the command information to the information stored. Other aspects of the invention terminate the command instruction if any compared information is not equal; or if the command instruction is not completed within a preset time interval.