Appeal No. 97-2982 Page 2
Application No. 08/219,554
BACKGROUND
The appellants’ invention is a method for interfacing a
plurality of host processors to a plurality of Small Computer
System Interface (SCSI) peripheral devices, i.e., SCSI
targets, via a single SCSI initiator. When a host processor
requests status data, i.e., ATTENTION DATA, from a target,
the data are written to a memory from which the processor can
read the requested data. The memory contains separate
address spaces for each processor. The requested data are
replicated. A separate copy of the data is stored at each of
the address spaces so that the data are available
independently to each processor. The separate copies are
essential so that a processor can clear its copy of ATTENTION
DATA without disturbing the other processors’ copies of the
same ATTENTION DATA.
Claim 1, which is representative for our purposes,
follows:
1. A method of providing any of a plurality of host
processors ATTENTION DATA on any of a plurality of
SCSI targets through a controller, said controller
including a host adapter, microprocessor, only one
SCSI initiator, and memory, with said memory
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Last modified: November 3, 2007