Grouping requests to reduce inter-process communication in memory systems
A memory system having a set of media, a plurality of inter-process communication channels, and a controller configured to run a plurality of processes that communicate with each other using inter-process communication messages transmitted via the plurality of inter-process communication channels, in response to requests from a host system to store data in the media or retrieve data from the media. The memory system has a message manager that examines requests from the host system, identifies a plurality of combinable requests, generates a combined request, and provides the combined request to the plurality of processes as a substitute of the plurality of combinable requests.
1. A memory system, comprising:
a set of media;
a plurality of inter-process communication channels; and
a controller configured to run a plurality of processes that communicate with each other using inter-process communication messages transmitted via the plurality of inter-process communication channels, in response to requests from a host system to store data in the media or retrieve data from the media;
wherein a message manager examines requests from the host system, identifies a plurality of combinable requests, generates a combined request, and provides the combined request to the plurality of processes as a substitute of the plurality of combinable requests;
wherein the plurality of processes generates a response to the combined request and the message manager further generates, from the response to the combined request, a plurality of responses for the plurality of combinable requests;
wherein the memory system receives from the host system the plurality of combinable requests in accordance with a predetermined protocol; the plurality of responses are communicated from the memory system to the host system in accordance with the predetermined protocol; and the predetermined protocol limits data items to be addressed by each request to a predetermined size limit;
wherein the plurality of combinable requests are identified based on requesting a common set of operations to be operated upon different portions of the media addressed using different addresses;
wherein the addresses specified in the plurality of combinable requests are contiguous in a logical memory address space; and
wherein the addresses specified the plurality of combinable requests are not contiguous in a logical memory address space.
2. The memory system of claim 1 , wherein the set of media includes a flash memory.
3. The memory system of claim 2 , wherein the memory system is a solid state drive.
4. The memory system of claim 1 , wherein the combined request identifies the different addresses using an address list.
5. The memory system of claim 1 , wherein the combined request identifies the different addresses using an address range.