White paper
www.emulex.com
corporate HQ: 3333 Susan Street, Costa Mesa, CA 92626 (714) 662-5600
Wokingham, u.K. (44) 118-977-2929 | Paris, France (33) 41-91 19-90
Beijing, china (86 10) 6849-9547
This document refers to various companies and products by their trade names. In most, if not all cases, their respective companies claim these designations as trademarks or
registered trademarks. This information is provided for reference only. Although this information is believed to be accurate and reliable at the time of publication, Emulex assumes
no responsibility for errors or omissions. Emulex reserves the right to make changes or corrections without notice. This report is the property of Emulex Corporation and may not be
duplicated without permission from the Company.
07-222 10/06
out-of-order Frame reassembly
Another element of Emulex s Frame-level Multiplexing
(Figure 2) is the ability to reassemble frames, which have
been received from the link out of order.
Frames received from the Fibre Channel link are stored in
bins of a receive buffer until all frames in a sequence are
received, regardless of the order in which they arrive. The
receive buffer bins are dynamically allocated based upon
information contained within the exchange context. An
Emulex HBA can allocate receive buffers for each target
device up to the maximum number of buffer-to-buffer
credits provided in the HBA. (To place this buffer memory
into context, an Emulex HBA can keep track of up to 2,048
concurrent exchanges). Once all frames are in the RX buffer,
they are passed on to DMA for further processing.
Emulex has had a longstanding tradition of providing the
most innovative, forward-thinking technologies and features
to the market. The basic building blocks of an Emulex HBA
continue to be rock-solid, enterprise-class performance and
reliability. Protecting customers data from corruption has
always been a cornerstone of Emulex LightPulse HBAs for
more than seven generations of product. Ensuring maximum
link utilization, via technologies such as Frame-level
Multiplexing with Out-of-Order Frame Reassembly, has also
been a standard feature of Emulex HBAs for many years.
These basic building blocks have served as the foundation
upon which we continue to build award-winning HBAs,
which are generations ahead of the competition.
Figure 2: out-of-order Frame reassembly
