Simplified interface to a time-division multiplexed communications medium

Abstract

A processor (100, 500) that executes applications (99) which require access to time slots of a time-division multiplexed (TDM) communications medium (110) uses spare processing capacity and/or spare hardware of the processor to interface to the TDM medium and to implement a time-slot interchange (TSI) function in a simple and low-cost manner. The processor has a control store (104, 300, 504, 604) that stores a bit map of the time slots of the TDM medium. The bit map is either examined by the processor during each time slot (FIG. 2) to determine, or is used by external circuitry (301, 302) or spare internal circuitry (511) of the processor to generate interrupts (406) or DMA requests that indicate to the processor or to a host interface (510) of the processor, which time slots to access. The processor has a read buffer (105, 505) and a write buffer (106, 506) for effecting data transfers between the TDM medium and the applications. The applications have random access to the buffers, thereby effecting a time-slot-interchange function.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.