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AssigneeIntel Corporation
InventorsJeff Charles Morriss, Shaun Knoll, Puthiya Kottal Nizar, Richard M. Haslam, Ajay V. Bhatt, Sudarshan Bala Cadambi
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Circuitry and complementary logic are provided to a bus controller, a number of 1:n bus signal distributors, and a number of bus interfaces of an hierarchical bus assembly for conducting data communication transactions between bus agents interconnected to the hierarchical bus assembly. The hierarchical serial bus assembly is used to serially interface a number of isochronous and asynchronous peripherals to the system unit of a computer system. These circuitry and complementary logic of the serial bus elements implement a number of elemental packets and a number of transaction protocols, employing a master/slave model of transaction flow control. Data communication transactions are conducted using the elemental packets and in accordance to the transaction protocols. In some embodiments, these circuitry and complementary logic of the serial bus elements are also used to conduct connection management transactions between the serial bus elements. The connection management transactions are conducted in like manner as the data communication transactions.
A bus controller comprising logic for serially formulating and transmitting token packets of at least a first and a second type to one or more bus signal distributors and one or more bus interfaces, each of the bus interfaces being disposed in a peripheral having one or more functions, for serially authorizing management and data transactions with selected ones of the bus signal distributor(s), the bus interface(s) and the function(s),
A bus signal distributor comprising logic for serially receiving token packets of at least a first and a second type from a bus controller, and forwarding the received token packets to zero or more other bus signal distributors coupled to the bus signal distributor and/or zero or more bus interfaces coupled to the bus signal distributor, each of the bus interfaces being disposed in a peripheral having one or more functions, for serially facilitating authorization by the bus controller of management and data transactions between the bus controller and selected ones of the bus signal distributor(s), the bus interface(s) and the function(s),
A bus interface comprising logic for serially receiving token packets of at least a first and a second type from a bus controller, each of the bus interfaces being disposed in a peripheral having one or more functions, for serially facilitating authorization by the bus controller of management and data transactions between the bus controller and selected ones of the bus interface(s) and the function(s),
In a computer system having a bus controller, at least one bus signal distributor, and at least one peripheral, wherein each peripheral has a bus interface and at least one function, each bus interface being coupled to a bus signal distributor, and each bus signal distributor being coupled to another bus signal distributor, except for one of the at least one bus signal distributor which is coupled to the bus controller, a method for operating the computer system, the method comprising the steps of:
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.