Abstract: Systems and methods are provided to differentiate different types of traffic going through the same physical channel such that the traffic flow for different traffic types does not impact each other. The physical channel can be configured to support a plurality of virtual channels. Each transaction that needs to be communicated through the physical channel can be classified into a certain traffic type, and each traffic type can be assigned to a virtual channel. Each transaction can be communicated on a respective virtual channel based on the corresponding traffic type. If the traffic flow through a first virtual channel for a transaction slows down, the traffic flow through a second virtual channel for another transaction can continue without getting impacted by the slow down on the first virtual channel.

Abstract: Ordering rules, such as those enforced by the peripheral component interconnect express (PCIe) protocol for data communications, can be intelligently enforced for independent transactions. A single device might host or be associated with multiple PCIe devices, such as virtual machines, and treating requests from these separate PCIe devices as coming from separate domains enables the ordering rules to be bypassed for certain transactions. Further, since a virtual machine might host multiple applications or be associated with multiple processors that can submit independent requests, the ordering rules can be bypassed at the transaction level in at least some instances. The ability to intelligently bypass ordering rules can help to improve the performance of the overall system, as requests do not need to be unnecessarily delayed and data storage capacity can be more fully utilized.