Universal Serial Bus datapump command interpreter

Abstract

A communication system for communicating over a Universal Serial Bus comprising a data pump and a controller is described. The data pump is physically separated from the controller element and is responsible for conventional signal processing operations such as might be performed by a digital signal processor (DSP) The data pump communicates with the controller via a predetermined communications protocol. The controller is, typically, co-located with a host computer and is responsible for commanding/communicating with the data pump. Physically separating the modem controller function from the modem data pump function allows the manufacturing of lower cost modems. Functional separation also allows either a modem's control or data pump operations to be repaired or upgraded independently of one another. The data pump is minimally equipped to perform only those communications control and data transfer functions that require time critical performance. Memory includes a command interpretation interface for performing the time critical operations.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.