FRACTIONAL MULTIPLEXING OF SERIAL ATTACHED SMALL COMPUTER SYSTEM INTERFACE LINKS

摘要

Methods, devices, and systems relating to Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) storage interconnect technology are provided. An SAS serial connection is established between an SAS initiator and an SAS expander over a physical link for communications between the SAS initiator and a plurality of target devices. The plurality of target devices is in communication with the SAS expander. SAS packets associated with each of the plurality of target devices are dynamically multiplexed and transmitted over the single SAS serial connection. Each SAS packet comprises one or more information bits indicating the target device with which the SAS packet is associated. The dynamically multiplexed SAS packets transmitted over the SAS connection may comprise SAS packets associated with at least two target devices having different maximum physical link rates. A result may be improved bandwidth utilization of the physical link when legacy SAS target devices with slower physical link rates are utilized.