WO2019119418A1

WO2019119418A1 - Shared storage system

Info

Publication number: WO2019119418A1
Application number: PCT/CN2017/118001
Authority: WO
Inventors: 李庆远
Original assignee: 李庆远
Priority date: 2017-12-22
Filing date: 2017-12-22
Publication date: 2019-06-27

Abstract

A shared storage system. The shared storage system is a computer system comprising a low energy-consumption computation unit and one or more high-performance computation units, the computation units respectively running independent operating systems and the one or more high-performance computation units reading from/writing to a shared memory by means of the low-consumption computation unit, thereby simultaneously possessing high performance and low-consumption long-term running characteristics. In addition, also disclosed is that the individual low energy-consumption computation unit is used for building a shared storage system with other computing apparatuses.

Description

Shared storage system

Field of invention

The invention relates to a shared storage system, in particular to a low energy consumption computing unit and one or more high performance computing units, all of which operate independently operating systems, and one or more high performance computing units are calculated by low energy consumption. The unit reads and writes shared storage computer systems, thereby providing high performance and low power consumption for long-term operation.

Background technique

The common NAS (Network Attached Storage) is built with a special calculation module, and it is stuck in an infinite loop that cannot be mass-produced and therefore has a high price and a small market. The desktop is also shrinking due to overperformance, and the current development is mainly limited to professional fields and gaming computers. When PC enthusiasts upgrade to a new computer, the old computer can still work, and the multi-bay NAS is even more expensive than a new computer. Many PC enthusiasts use the old PC to build a NAS. Compared to a dedicated NAS, the old PC is just more cumbersome and more power-hungry.

For professionals, gamers and other desktop users, if you can combine NAS and desktop PCs, you can simultaneously meet high performance (desktop read and write hard drive speed close to the native interface), low power consumption, and take up no extra space.

However, it is not possible to simply connect the hard disk data interface to multiple computing units. In an application scenario, a hard disk is a shared resource. It does not support multiple computing units to read and write at the same time. There is a mutual exclusion problem. If the hard disk supports multiple computing units to read and write at the same time, the underlying layer also needs an operating system to solve the mutual exclusion problem, which will increase the cost. The replacement of multiple hard drives plus hardware damage such as bad sectors can significantly cost more than a separate set of low-power NAS computing units and operating systems.

Summary of invention

The shared storage system of the embodiment of the present invention includes:

· A Low Energy-consumption Unit (LEU), including CPU, motherboard, and memory. The operating system can be installed on one of the connected shared storage devices, or it can be installed in a separate storage device (such as EMMC/UFS/SSD) included in the LEU to improve performance. The architecture can be based on generic x86 or on custom ARM/MIPS. The LEU can be integrated into a single SOC or directly integrated on the motherboard of the high performance computing unit described later.

• One or more High-performance Computing Units (HCUs), including CPU, motherboard, and memory. The high performance here is relative to the aforementioned LEU.

LEU's motherboard contains two or more sets of storage data interfaces:

A set of storage data interfaces (input type I): used to enter data from the data interface of one or more shared storage devices.

One or more sets of storage data interfaces (output type O): a data interface that is connected to a storage device as one or more HCUs. The class O storage data interface enters the read-write ready state only if and only if the operating system of the LEU is booted up and enters a running state.

For the operating system BIOS/UEFI of the HCU and the operating system above the HCU, the storage device indirectly read and written by the LEU class O interface is recognized as the native interface.

However, it is to be understood that the invention is not intended to be limited or limited by the scope of the invention, and the invention disclosed herein The skilled artisan includes significant improvements and modifications thereto.

Detailed ways

The invention will now be described more fully hereinafter. However, the invention may be embodied in many different forms and should not be construed as being limited to the embodiments set forth herein. The present invention is intended to be thorough and complete, and the scope of the invention will be fully conveyed by those skilled in the art.

It will be appreciated that various changes can be made in the function and arrangement of the elements without departing from the spirit and scope of the invention. Thus, embodiments are examples or implementations of the invention, not the only implementation. The appearances of "one embodiment", "an embodiment" or "an embodiment" are not necessarily referring to the same embodiment. Although various features of the invention may be described in the context of a single embodiment, the features may be provided separately or in any suitable combination. Conversely, although the invention may be described herein in the context of a separate embodiment, the invention may be practiced in a single embodiment or any combination of the embodiments.

All terms (including technical and scientific terms) used herein have the same meaning as commonly understood by one of ordinary skill in the art to which this invention belongs, unless otherwise defined. It will be further understood that terms such as those defined in commonly used dictionaries should be interpreted as having a meaning consistent with their meaning in the context of the related art and the present disclosure, and will not be construed as idealized or excessive. Formal meaning, unless explicitly defined in this article.

The present invention discloses a shared storage system, the embodiments of which are primarily focused on the combination of NAS and desktop computers. However, embodiments of the invention are not limited to the combination of NAS and desktop computers. Any computer system that includes one or more storage device or storage device data interfaces (such as a home game console system, a graphics workstation, or even a conventional laptop) can utilize the technical solutions described below.

For the operating system on the motherboard BIOS/UEFI of the HCU and the HCU, the indirect read/write storage device through the Low Energy-consumption Unit (LEU) is recognized as the native interface. This requires that the operating system on top of the LEU, in addition to the hardware standards of the corresponding storage device, also simulate some hardware features of the storage device (such as NCQ/NVMe) through software. In addition, the LEU's motherboard circuitry must also conform to the electrical characteristics of the corresponding storage device data interface standard.

The above description is only an embodiment of the invention and is not intended to limit the scope of the invention. Various changes and modifications of the claims and the description of the present invention are still within the scope of the claimed invention. Moreover, each of the embodiments and claims does not necessarily include all of the advantages or features disclosed. In addition, the Abstract and the headings are only used to facilitate the search for patent documents and are not intended to limit the scope of the claimed invention in any way.

Claims

A shared storage system comprising a low energy computing unit (LEU) consisting of a CPU, a motherboard, memory, and an operating system running thereon.
The motherboard of claim 1 comprising a plurality of sets of storage data interfaces:

A set of input data interfaces: connect one or more storage devices to input data.

One or more sets of output type data interfaces: one or more computing devices connected, the computing device being indirectly connected to the storage device through the shared storage system; the output type data interface conforming to the storage device data interface The electrical characteristics of the shared storage system emulate the hardware and firmware implementation of the storage device. For the computing device, reading and writing the storage device is no different than directly reading and writing the storage device.
A shared storage system comprising a low energy computing unit (LEU) consisting of a CPU, a motherboard, a memory, a storage device and an operating system running thereon.
The motherboard of claim 3 comprising a plurality of sets of storage data interfaces:

A set of input data interfaces: connect one or more storage devices to input data.

One or more sets of output type data interfaces: one or more computing devices connected, the computing device being indirectly connected to the storage device through the shared storage system; the output type data interface conforming to the storage device data interface The electrical characteristics of the shared storage system emulate the hardware and firmware implementation of the storage device. For the computing device, reading and writing the storage device is no different than directly reading and writing the storage device.
A shared storage system comprising a low energy computing unit (LEU) consisting of a CPU, a motherboard, memory, and an operating system running thereon.
The shared storage system of claim 5 further comprising one or more computing devices.
The LEU motherboard of claim 5, comprising a plurality of sets of storage data interfaces:

A set of input data interfaces: connect one or more storage devices to input data.

One or more sets of output type data interfaces: one or more computing devices connected, the computing device being indirectly connected to the storage device through the shared storage system; the output type data interface conforming to the storage device data interface The electrical characteristics of the shared storage system emulate the hardware and firmware implementation of the storage device. For the computing device, reading and writing the storage device is no different than directly reading and writing the storage device.