NC-SI port controller

• Main Authors: Jean-Luc Frenoy, Jean-Paul Aldebert, Fabrice Jean Verplanken, Claude Basso
• Format: Patent
• Language: English
• Published: 11.05.2016
• Subjects: CALCULATING; COMPUTING; COUNTING; ELECTRIC COMMUNICATION TECHNIQUE; ELECTRIC DIGITAL DATA PROCESSING; ELECTRICITY; PHYSICS; TRANSMISSION OF DIGITAL INFORMATION, e.g. TELEGRAPHICCOMMUNICATION

A Network Controller-Sideband Interface (NC-SI) Port Controller (NPC) 23 of a Network Interface Controller (NIC) provides a sideband connection between the network 2 and a Baseboard Management Controller (BMC) 17. Pass-through traffic to and from the BMC are injected and extracted by the XBB 16 and RBB 6 units of the Host Ethernet Adapter 3 part of the NIC. Asynchronous event notification (AEN) pseudopackets giving status information about the NIC are compiled 28 and injected into the data route of the NPC that carries packets from the BMC. Both of those kinds of packet pass by a packet parser 30 with the AEN pseudo-packets being dropped but their content being assembled by the NPC into an AEN packet which is then injected into the data route of the NPC that carries packets bound for the BMC. The packet parser analyses data transmitted from the sideband endpoint (BMC) towards the network and identifies NC-SI requests from the BMC and provides response packets in the same way. The NIC also comprises a Media Access Controller 4. The HEA comprises a host buffer to store a packet from the host; a sideband buffer to store a packet from the NPC and an arbiter connected to allow, at different times, a packet in the host buffer and a packet in the sideband buffer, to advance from there along a transmit route to the MAC. In-Band packets may have higher priority than sideband packets.