US 5,951,664 A · Computer system having a multimedia bus and including improved time slotting and bus allocation

Abstract

A computer system optimized for real-time applications which provides increased performance over current computer architectures. The system includes a standard local system bus or expansion bus, such as the PCI bus, and also includes a dedicated real-time bus or multimedia bus. Various multimedia devices are coupled to one or more of the expansion bus and/or the multimedia bus. The multimedia bus is preferably time sliced wherein time slices or time slots are allocated in proportion to the required bandwidth. Each multimedia device includes programmable time slotting logic which determines the appropriate time slot. In one embodiment, the time slices are each a constant size and a number of the equal sized time slots are allocated to respective data streams in proportion to the required bandwidth. Alternatively, the time slots are dynamically sized or allocated to data streams in proportion to the required bandwidth. The computer system of the present invention thus provides greater performance for real-time applications than prior systems.

Claims14

Dependent claims

A computer system including a bus with improved time slotting features, comprising:

a CPU;
main memory coupled to the CPU which stores data accessible by the CPU;
bridge logic coupled to the CPU and to the main memory, wherein the bridge logic includes a memory controller coupled to the main memory and also includes bus interface logic;
a bus coupled to the bridge logic, wherein said bus includes a plurality of data lines for transmitting data;
a plurality of devices coupled to said bus, wherein each of said devices perform operations on said bus, wherein each of said devices includes bus interface logic for accessing said bus and performing data transfers on said bus;
wherein each of said plurality of devices includes intelligent time slotting logic which controls access to the bus, wherein the intelligent time slotting logic for each respective device operates to selectively assign a respective time slot for bus access to said respective device, wherein each of the plurality of devices has guaranteed access to the bus during the respective time slot without requiring arbitration for the bus.

3 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.

Computer system having a multimedia bus and including improved time slotting and bus allocation

Life of this patent

Computer system having a multimedia bus and including improved time slotting and bus allocation

Life of this patent

Abstract

Claims14