US 20040078508A1
(19) United States
(12) Patent Application Publication (io) Pub. No.: US 2004/0078508 Al
Rivard (43) Pub. Date: Apr. 22,2004
(54) SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR HIGH
PERFORMANCE DATA STORAGE AND
RETRIEVAL
(76) Inventor: William G. Rivard, Menlo Park, CA (US)
Correspondence Address:
William Rivard
1062 Arbor Rd.
Menlo Park, CA 94025 (US)
(21) Appl. No.: 10/678,939
(22) Filed: Oct. 2, 2003
Related U.S. Application Data
(60) Provisional application No. 60/415,473, filed on Oct. 2, 2002.
Publication Classification
(51) Int. CI.7 G11C 5/00
(52) U.S. C I 711 4
(57) ABSTRACT
A new storage system architecture is described that satisfies the requirements ol high availability and high performance. High performance is achieved by utilizing both parallel RAID data paths to disk and a split read and write cache. The read cache is associated with a host interface controller and the write cache is distributed over independent multi-ported write cache controllers operating within a battery protected power domain. Disk and write cache failures are survived through disk redundancy; controller redundancy provides system level survival for system faults. The system is therefore tolerant of both component and power failure, including combined component and power failure.
