Method of allowing multiple, hardware embedded configurations to be recognized by an operating system

• US 20040215861A1
• Filed: 04/23/2003
• Published: 10/28/2004
• Est. Priority Date: 04/23/2003
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Texas Instruments, Inc.
• Original Assignee: Texas Instruments, Inc.
• Inventors: Guyotte, Gregory S., Hanrahan, Michael J., Beaudoin, Denis R., Egr, William S.
• Granted Patent: US 7,020,723 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 710/300
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 13/4072 Drivers or receivers G06F13/4086 takes precedence; for multistate logic circuits H03K19/0002

Abstract

A communications system for enabling extension of an internal common bus architecture (CBA) segment of a first root physical device to an internal CBA bus segment of one or more remote external physical device includes the first root physical device having a first serial communications interface module in the root device coupled between said internal CBA bus segment and an input and output port of the root device for serializing bus transactions from the first device to the output port of the root device and deserializing data received from at the input port to the internal CBA bus segment of the first device. The remote external physical device includes a second serial communications interface module coupled between the internal CBA bus segment and an input and output port of the remote device for serializing bus transactions from the remote device to the output port of the remote device and deserializing data received at the input port to the internal CBA bus segment of said remote device. The modules are coupled to each other by an external cabling. An enumerator in the root device obtains knowledge of the remote hardware module and accompanying register set by abstracting these details and automatically configuring the remote module in the system.

Claims

1. In a communications system for enabling extension of an internal common bus architecture (CBA) segment of a first root physical device to an internal CBA bus segment of at least one second external physical device comprising:

said first root physical device having a first serial communications interface module in said first device coupled between said internal CBA bus segment and an input and output port of said first device for serializing bus transactions from said first device to said output port of said first device and deserializing data received from at said input port to said internal CBA bus segment of said first device;

said second external physical device including a second serial communications interface module in said second device coupled between said internal CBA bus segment and an input and output port of said second device for serializing bus transactions from said second device to said output port of said second device and deserializing data received at said input port to said internal CBA bus segment of said second device; and

an external serial cable coupled to said input and output ports of said first and second devices for transferring the serialized transactions between said first and second devices, the improvement comprising;

an enumerator in said first root device for automatically configuring for said at least one second serial communications interface module added to the system.

2. The system of claim 1 wherein said enumerator abstracts knowledge of the hardware of said second external device and accompanying register set.

3. The system of claim 2 wherein said enumerator includes means for inputting properly formatted device configuration files for each said second device attached in the system and provides an output file that contains address maps and interrupts information for each device and modules discovered in the system.

4. The system of claim 1 wherein said enumerator has a recursive discovery and configuration algorithm that discovers all remote devices and creates address and interrupt maps between said remote devices and the root device.

5. A communication system for enabling extension of an internal common bus architecture (CBA) bus segment of a first root device to an internal CBA bus segment of at least one remote device comprising:

a first interface module in said first root device and a second interface module in said at least one remote device and an external cable between these modules;

said first root device includes an enumerator for automatically configuring for said remote device to be added to the system by a recursive discovery and configuration algorithm.

6. The system of claim 5 wherein said remote device is daisy chained to a further remote device by a third interface module and wherein said enumerator automatically configures for said further remote device to be added to the system by said recursive discovery and configuration algorithm.

7. The system of claim 6 wherein said enumerator reads said remote device identification register and locates associated device configuration file and then determines if the remote has more than one interface module and if there is more than one interface module, the enumerator recursively performs the above steps until the end of the interface chain is reached.

8. The system of claim 8 wherein as the enumerator is working toward reaching the end of the chain, it also creates address mappings to the interface modules that it finds along the way to give the enumerator the information that it needs to revisit the interface modules later in order to create mappings for the remote peripherals.

9. The system of claim 8 wherein once the enumerator reaches the end of an interface module chain, it creates mappings for the peripherals on the end device and the return total size of all remote peripheral maps is used to compute the memory maps based on return value and the recursive algorithm returns, which effectively moves the control back to the previous interface module device in the chain and then determines if there is another local interface module and if so goes onto the next interface module and traverses it to the end of its chain.

10. A method of allowing multiple, hardware embedded configurations to be recognized by an operating system in a root device comprising the steps of:

recognizing and utilizing multiple embedded hardware configurations in remote devices and making said configurations recognizable by an operating system in an independent manner.

11. The method of claim 10 wherein said recognizing step includes inputting properly formatted device configuration files for each device to be attached in the system.

12. The method of claim 11 wherein said recognizing step includes an enumerator discovering all remote devices and creating address and interrupt maps between said remote devices and the root device.

13. The method of claim 12 wherein said recognizing step includes said enumerator reading said remote device identification register and locating associated device configuration file and then determining if the remote has more than one interface module and if there is more than one interface module, recursively performing the previous steps until the end of the interface chain is reached.

14. The method of claim 13 wherein as the enumerator is working toward reaching the end of the chain, it also creates address mappings to the interface modules that it finds along the way to give the enumerator the information that it needs to revisit the interface modules later in order to create mappings for the remote peripherals.

15. The method of claim 14 wherein once the enumerator reaches the end of an interface module chain, it creates mappings for the peripherals on the end device and the return total size of all remote peripheral maps is used to compute the memory maps based on return value and the recursive algorithm returns, which effectively moves the control back to the previous interface module device in the chain and then determines if there is another local interface module and if so goes onto the next interface module and traverses it to the end of its chain.

16. The method of claim 12 wherein said enumerator is executed during system boot, and requires no intervention on the part of the user.