초록 ▼

A plurality of commands which may be sent sequentially from a host computer are interpreted by a host command interpreter to generate a disk command for each disk unit. When these commands make up an access demand for a single continuous area, they are grouped into a single command, which is execute

A plurality of commands which may be sent sequentially from a host computer are interpreted by a host command interpreter to generate a disk command for each disk unit. When these commands make up an access demand for a single continuous area, they are grouped into a single command, which is executed substantially at the same time at each disk unit. Also, a plurality of RMW processing systems having different command issued to disk units are available. A selection condition is detected from the I/O demand information supplied by a host computer, and an optimum one of a plurality of RMW processing systems is selected and executed on the basis of the selection condition.

대표청구항 ▼

[ We claim:] [2.] An array disk controller to which a plurality of disk units are connected, comprising:means for receiving a host command from a host computer requesting access to data stored in j disk units (j: an integer; J.gtoreq.1) connected to said array disk controller, and notifying an end o

[ We claim:] [2.] An array disk controller to which a plurality of disk units are connected, comprising:means for receiving a host command from a host computer requesting access to data stored in j disk units (j: an integer; J.gtoreq.1) connected to said array disk controller, and notifying an end of the host command to said host computer;means for temporarily storing host commands successively issued by the host computer in a queue;means for extracting and grouping, from among the host commands stored in said queue, m host commands (m: an integer; m.gtoreq.2) requesting access to a continuous data area, and producing k disk commands respectively corresponding to k disk units (k: an integer; k.gtoreq.j) according to the extracted and grouped host commands as a single new virtual host command;means for issuing said disk commands substantially concurrent to said k disk units so as to operate said k disk units in parallel and detecting whether data transfer due to read/write operation by said disk commands have ended; andmeans for storing and managing information as to relationships between said single new virtual host command and said k disk commands;wherein said m host commands accessing said continuous data area issued by said host computer are regarded as a single new virtual host command within said array disk controller, and thus time of disk latencies in said disk units is reduced substantially to 1/m compared to when said m host commands are executed individually,the grouped m host commands accessing to a continuous data area are data read commands and are regarded as a single new virtual read command,said extracting and grouping means produce k disk read commands to be distributed to said k disk units using said single new virtual read command,said disk commands issuing means issues said k disk read commands to said k disk units, andsaid continuous data area is read collectively by said disk units as a single data block, and thus read at a data transfer rate which is faster by a factor f=k/j compared to when said m host commands are executed individually.