The present invention provides an architecture and method for increasing the
performance and resource utilization of networked storage architectures by use
of hardware-based storage element mapping. The architecture utilizes a customized
programmable processing element to map host read or write commands to physical
storage element commands. The present invention uses a plurality of data structures,
such as tables, to map host read and write commands to physical storage elements.
The hardware-based storage element mapping controller uses the tables, including
a mapping segment descriptor table, to map from global address space addresses
to physical storage element addresses.
