A device connectable between a host computer and a computer peripheral over a standard bus interface is disclosed, used to improve security, and to detect and prevent malware operation. Messages passing between the host computer and the computer peripherals are intercepted and analyzed based on pre-configured criteria, and legitimate messages transparently pass through the device, while suspected messages are blocked. The device communicates with the host computer and the computer peripheral using proprietary or industry standard protocol or bus, which may be based on a point-to-point serial communication such as USB or SATA. The messages may be stored in the device for future analysis, and may be blocked based on current or past analysis of the messages. The device may serve as a VPN client and securely communicate with a VPN server using the host Internet connection.

A high-speed serial interface includes a physical layer circuit at a transmit end, a monitor, a clock gating circuit, a control bitstream generation circuit, and a random bitstream generation circuit. The monitor is configured to: when no service data is being sent, instruct the clock gating circuit to stop sending a clock signal to partial modules in the physical layer circuit at the transmit end. The control bitstream generation circuit sends a first control bitstream through a serializer/deserializer (SerDes), to indicate that the transmit end has turned off partial modules in the physical layer (PHY) circuit at the transmit end and so on. The random bitstream generation circuit sends a random bitstream.

A system and method to allocate serial interconnection lanes on a die to multiple communication protocols is disclosed. The die has at least one processing core. The die incudes a first communication subsystem including a controller, a protocol coding sublayer (PCS) for interchanging data, and a data interface coupled to the core. The die includes a second communication subsystem including a controller, a PCS for interchanging data, and a data interface coupled to the core. A mode input selects at least one of the first or second communication protocol. A data router has an input coupled to the PCS of the first communication subsystem and an input coupled to the PCS of the second communication subsystem. The data router has an output coupled to the set of serial interconnection lanes, and a selection input coupled to the mode input to allocate some of the lanes for the selected protocol.

A control unit provides a number of buffer credits, to one or more channels, in response to an initiation of a startup phase of communication between the one or more channels and the control unit, where the provided number of buffer credits when used for transferring data causes transfer ready operations but no retry operations. The control unit iteratively increases the number of buffer credits by an amount that is high enough to eliminate any transfer ready operations or cause retry operations to occur within a predetermined amount of time from the initiation of the startup phase.

A control unit monitors a number of transfer ready operations and a number of retry operations during a monitoring period during communication with a plurality of channels. Based, on the monitoring, a number of buffer credits for communication with the plurality of channels is adjusted.

A channel of a host computational device sends a command to transfer data to a control unit included in a storage controller. The channel of the host computational device receives a number of buffer credits from the control unit for communication with the control unit, where the number of buffer credits that is received is based on the control unit monitoring a number of transfer ready operations and a number of retry operations during a monitoring period while communicating with a plurality of channels that includes the channel.

A control unit monitors a number of transfer ready operations and a number of retry operations during a monitoring period during communication with a plurality of channels. Based, on the monitoring, a number of buffer credits for communication with the plurality of channels is adjusted.

A channel of a host computational device sends a command to transfer data to a control unit included in a storage controller. The channel of the host computational device receives a number of buffer credits from the control unit for communication with the control unit, where the number of buffer credits that is received is based on the control unit monitoring a number of transfer ready operations and a number of retry operations during a monitoring period while communicating with a plurality of channels that includes the channel.

Virtual machines in a computer system cluster, or cloud environment, require access to their assigned storage resources connected to the virtual machines via storage area networks (SAN). Such virtual machines may be independent from associated physical servers in the computer system cluster on which they are deployed. These virtual machines may dynamically migrate among assigned physical servers while maintaining access to their connected storage resources both from the source physical server and the target physical server during the migration.

Virtual machines in a computer system cluster, or cloud environment, require access to their assigned storage resources connected to the virtual machines via storage area networks (SAN). Such virtual machines may be independent from associated physical servers in the computer system cluster on which they are deployed. These virtual machines may dynamically migrate among assigned physical servers while maintaining access to their connected storage resources both from the source physical server and the target physical server during the migration.