SISCI Glossary

Connected segment

A remote segment for which the IO base address and the size are known.

DMA

A system or network resource that can be used as an alternative to PIO do move data between segments. The SISCI API provides a set of functions to control the PCIe or system DMA engines.

Global DMA

A SISCI DMA resource that can address any remote segment without being mapped into the local address space.

Host

A processor with one or more PCI Express enabled switches or pluggable adapters.

IO Device.

A PCI or PCI Express card / device, e.g. a GPU, NVMe or FPGA attached to a host system or expansion box attached to the network.

Local segment

A memory segment located on the same processor where the application runs and accessed using the host memory interface. Identified by its SegmentId.

Mapped segment

A local or remote (connected) segment mapped in the addressable space of a program.

PIO

Programmed IO. A load or store operation performed by a CPU towards a mapped address.

Processor

A collection of one or more CPUs sharing memory using a local bus.

Reflective Memory

Hardware based broadcast / multicast functionality that simultaneously forwards data to all hosts in the fabric. Only with all configurations.

Remote segment

A memory segment accessed via the fabric.

SegmentId

A Host unique number identifying a memory segment within a host. A segment can be uniquely identified by its SegmentId and local NodeId.

System DMA

A SISCI DMA resource provided by the CPU system, e.g. Intel Crystal Beach DMA.