Methods and systems for handling inter-process and inter-module communications in servers and server clusters

1. A system for communicating a packet, the system comprising:

means for converting a packet into cells within an input/output interface, each cell specifying a destination physical address corresponding to a first physical partition of a physically-partitionable symmetric multiprocessor;

means for transferring each cell through a switch in accordance with the destination address;

means for forming the cells into a reconstructed packet within the first physical partition;

wherein the physically-partitionable symmetric multiprocessor is programmable as a selected one of a first configuration comprising one physical partition and a second configuration comprising a plurality of physical partitions;

wherein the packet has a destination logical address and the destination physical address of each cell corresponding to the packet is based at least in part on the destination logical address of the packet;

wherein the forming of the cells into a reconstructed packet comprises data transfers according to a direct memory access protocol; and

wherein the input/output interface comprises at least one of a network interface and a storage interface.

2. The system of claim 1 , wherein the physically-partitionable symmetric multiprocessor is programmed in the first configuration and the first physical partition is the only physical partition.

3. The system of claim 1 , wherein the physically-partitionable symmetric multiprocessor is programmed in the second configuration and the first physical partition is one of the plurality of physical partitions.

4. A system of directing a packet to a process executing on a symmetric multi-processor, the system comprising:

in an input/output interface, means for receiving a packet comprising a destination address;

means for dividing the packet into a plurality of cells wherein each cell has a fabric address specifying an egress port of a switch fabric and wherein each fabric address is based at least in part on the packet destination address;

means for routing each cell via the switch fabric in accordance with each cell fabric address;

means for forming the routed cells into a reconstructed packet directly provided to the process executing on the symmetric multi-processor;

wherein the symmetric multi-processor is programmable as a selected one of a first configuration comprising one physical partition and a second configuration comprising a plurality of physical partitions, each of the configurations thereby comprising at least a first physical partition, and the process executes in the first physical partition;

wherein the directly providing the reconstructed packet comprises data transfers according to a direct memory access protocol; and

wherein the input/output interface comprises at least one of a network interface and a storage interface.

5. A system, comprising:

in a first compute module, a first fabric interface connected to a switch fabric and a first symmetric multi-processor connected to the first fabric interface, the first fabric interface comprising means for directly receiving a first-to-second packet from a first send process executing on the first symmetric multi-processor, the first fabric interface further comprising means for cellifying the first-to-second packet into first-to-second cells and emitting the first-to-second cells to the switch fabric, each cell comprising a respective fabric address specifying an egress port of the switch fabric, each fabric address being based at least in part on a first-to-second packet destination address included within the first-to-second packet;

in a second compute module, a second fabric interface connected to the switch fabric and a second symmetric multi-processor connected to the second fabric interface, the second fabric interface comprising means for directly receiving a second-to-first packet from a second send process executing on the second symmetric multi-processor, the second fabric interface further comprising means for cellifying the second-to-first packet into second-to-first cells and emitting the second-to-first cells to the switch fabric, each cell comprising a respective fabric address specifying an egress port of the switch fabric, each fabric address being based at least in part on a second-to-first packet destination address included within the second-to-first packet;

in the switch fabric, means for receiving the first-to-second cells and the second-to-first cells and routing each cell in accordance with its respective fabric address;

in the first compute module, the first fabric interface further comprising means for receiving the second-to-first cells, forming the received second-to-first cells into a reconstructed second-to-first packet, and directly providing the reconstructed second-to-first packet to a first receive process executing on the first symmetric multi-processor;

in the second compute module, the second fabric interface further comprising means for receiving the first-to-second cells, forming the received first-to-second cells into a reconstructed first-to-second packet, and directly providing the reconstructed first-to-second packet to a second receive process executing on the second symmetric multi-processor;

wherein each of the first symmetric multi-processor and the second symmetric multi-processor are programmable as a selected one of at least a first configuration comprising one physical partition and a second configuration comprising a plurality of physical partitions;

wherein the directly receiving the first-to-second packet and the second-to-first packet comprises data transfers according to a direct memory access read protocol; and

wherein the directly providing the reconstructed first-to-second packet and the reconstructed second-to-first packet comprises data transfers according to a direct memory access write protocol.