Electronic circuits with dynamic bus partitioning

Electronic apparatus comprising:

• a plurality of functional electronic blocks;
• a bus interconnecting said functional blocks;
• one or more electronically controllable switches partitioning said bus into bus segments, each of said electronically controllable switches having an on state wherein two of said bus segments are interconnected and an off state wherein said two bus segments are isolated;
• and
• a switch controller for controlling the states of said electronically controllable switches in response to control information, wherein said switch controller comprises first and second source-destination decoders, each responsive to control information representative of the source and the destination of a different bus transaction, for controlling the states of said electronically controllable switches to permit first and second simultaneous bus transactions on said bus.

In electronic apparatus comprising a plurality of functional electronic blocks interconnected by a bus, a method for communicating between the functional blocks, comprising the steps of:

• fabricating a plurality of functional electronic blocks on a single monolithic integrated circuit;
• interconnecting the functional electronic blocks with an on-chip bus;
• partitioning the on-chip bus into bus segments using electronically controllable dynamic logic bidirectional bus buffers;
• enabling a bus transaction between a source functional block and a destination functional block by interconnecting bus segments to complete a connection between the source and destination functional blocks;
• and
• performing the bus transaction on the interconnected bus segments.

Electronic apparatus comprising:

• a plurality of functional electronic blocks on a single monolithic integrated circuit;
• an on-chip bus interconnecting said functional electronic blocks, wherein said functional electronic blocks and said bus are fabricated on a single substrate;
• means for partitioning the on-chip bus into bus segments, comprising electronically controllable dynamic logic bidirectional bus buffers;
• and
• means for enabling a bus transaction on the bus by interconnecting bus segments in response to control information representative of the source and the destination of the bus transaction.

Electronic apparatus comprising:

• a plurality of functional electronic blocks interconnected by a bus;
• means for partitioning the bus into bus segments;
• and
• means for enabling a bus transaction on the bus by interconnecting bus segments in response to control information representative of the source and the destination of the bus transaction;
• wherein said means for partitioning the bus comprises one or more electronically controllable switches, each having an on state and an off state, wherein said means for enabling a bus transaction comprises a switch controller for controlling the states of said electronically controllable switches in response to said control information, and wherein said switch controller comprises first and second source-destination decoders, each responsive to control information representative of the source and the destination of a different bus transaction, for controlling the states of said electronically controllable switches to permit first and second simultaneous bus transactions on said bus.