RECONFIGURABLE SEMANTIC PROCESSOR
A storage server uses a semantic processor to parse and respond to client requests. A direct execution parser in the semantic processor parses an input stream, comprising client storage server requests, according to a defined grammar. A semantic processor execution engine capable of manipulating data (e.g., data movement, mathematical, and logical operations) executes microcode segments in response to requests from the direct execution parser in order to perform the client-requested operations. The resulting operational efficiency allows an entire storage server to be collapsed in some embodiments into a few relatively small integrated circuits that can be placed on a media device's printed circuit board, with the semantic processor itself drawing perhaps a few Watts of power.
1 . A method of operating a storage server, the method comprising:
parsing received client requests according to a grammar comprising terminal and non-terminal symbols stored in a parser stack, where the parsing includes combining a non-terminal symbol from the parser stack and a received client opcode from the client requests to determine which data operations to initiate; and
initiating data operations, based on the results of parsing, to perform the client requests.
2 . The method of claim 1 , wherein parsing received client requests comprises constructing a parser table having an entry for each combination of a specific non-terminal symbol and allowable client opcode, and looking up the combination of non-terminal symbol and a received client opcode to determine which data operations to initiate.
3 . The method of claim 1 , wherein at least some client requests can contain one or more strings representing a filepath, a filename, or a filepath/filename, and wherein parsing a particular such client request comprises parsing the string for certain characters, and indicating the location of those characters when initiating a data operation.
4 . The method of claim 1 , wherein parsing received client requests comprises expanding non-terminal symbols in the stored grammar onto a parser stack in response to the content of the client requests, the method further comprising, for at least one of the data operations, modifying the contents of the parser stack.
5 . The method of claim 4 , wherein the at least one of the data operations comprises a client request for multiple data operations in the same datagram, wherein a data operation for a preceding one of the multiple data operations pushes a non-terminal symbol onto the top of the parser stack to cause parsing to begin on a following one of the multiple data operations.
6 . The method of claim 1 , further comprising maintaining a machine context interface for storing and retrieving client session contexts, open file contexts, and pending client transaction contexts.
7 . A method of operating a storage server gateway, the method comprising:
parsing received client requests according to a first stored grammar comprising terminal and non-terminal symbols; and
initiating data operations to a remote storage server, based on the results of parsing, to perform the client requests;
parsing received server responses from the remote storage server according to a second stored grammar comprising terminal and non-terminal symbols; and
responding to the client requests by sending a response datagram to one or more clients issuing the client requests, based on the results of parsing one of the received client requests and one of the server responses.
8 . The method of claim 7 , wherein all parsing is preformed by a common parser.
9 . The method of claim 7 , wherein client requests and server responses are parsed by separate parsers.
10 . The method of claim 7 , wherein initiating data operations comprises encrypting data to be written to the storage server and decrypting data to be read from the storage server.