Fly-by serial bus arbitration
AssigneeApple Computer, Inc.
InventorsWilliam S. Duckwall, Michael D. Teener
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
In a first embodiment, multi-speed concatenated packet strings are transmitted by a first node on a serial bus. To accommodate multi-speed packets, a speed signal is transmitted immediately prior to the packet. In a second embodiment, ACK-concatenation is used to allow a node to transmit a data packet immediately after transmitting an acknowledge signal on the bus. The data packet need not be related to the ACK packet. In a third embodiment, a node which receives a first data packet followed by a data end signal on a child port, concatenates a second data packet onto the first data packet during retransmission. The second data packet is also transmitted down the bus in the direction of the node which originally transmitted the first data packet.
Claims30
A node for a communications bus comprising:
- port means for coupling the node to the communications bus;
- and
- transmission means for transmitting a first speed signal for a first data packet to be transmitted and for transmitting the first data packet at the first speed, and further for transmitting a second speed signal for a second data packet to be transmitted and for transmitting the second data packet at the second speed.
A node for a communications bus comprising:
- port means for coupling the node to the communications bus;
- and
- transmission means for retransmitting a first packet received through a child port means and for transmitting a second packet without requesting access to the communications bus after the first packet is retransmitted.
A node for a communications bus comprising:
- port means for coupling the node to the communications bus;
- and
- a transmission means for transmitting an acknowledge packet in response to receiving a packet and further for transmitting a packet unrelated to the acknowledgement packet without requesting access to the communications bus after the acknowledgment packet is transmitted.
A node for a communications bus comprising:
- port means for coupling the node to the communications bus;
- and
- transmission means for retransmitting an acknowledgment packet received through a child port means and further for transmitting a packet unrelated to the acknowledgment packet without requesting access to the communications bus after the acknowledgment packet is retransmitted.
A root node for a communications bus comprising:
- port means for coupling the node to the communications bus;
- and
- transmission means for transmitting an acknowledgement packet in response to receiving a packet and further for transmitting an arbitration cycle start packet without requesting access to the communications bus after the acknowledgement packet is transmitted.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.