Installation guide

About the PCI-SB StarFabric® PCI Interface Card
2-20 PCI-SB StarFabric PCI Interface Card Installation Guide
FIGURE 12. Path Routing for Dynamic PCI Topology
At power-up, all StarFabric-enabled devices are discovered and identified by FID.
Routing tables residing in the edge nodes (PCI-SB cards) keep track of best paths to
destinations in the topology. The number of nodes between a source device and a
target device are referred to as turns. Based on the routing table in the source
device, the path with fewest turns is used to reach a target device when changes
occur in the topology or the best path is used.
As shown in Figure 12, when the link to a remote device goes down, the Root
bridge can still reach the remote device by reconfiguring the path dynamically
using path routing functionality.
Refer to the StarGen Fabric Programmer’s Guide for more details on using the
PCI-SB card’s advanced routing functionality.
Remote StarFabric Device
Root Bridge
PCI-SB Interface
PCI-SB card
configured as
Root bridge
All StarFabric-enabled
devices are identified at
power-up and topology
remains static
A break in a link here means
this topology reconfigures
itself automatically to reach
the remote device
Remote StarFabric Device
Dynamic path
Primary path