Data processing system, method and interconnect fabric for selective link information allocation in a data processing system

• US 7,483,422 B2
• Filed: 02/10/2005
• Issued: 01/27/2009
• Est. Priority Date: 02/10/2005
• Status: Expired due to Fees

• Current Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: Starke, William J., Fields, James S. Jr., Stuecheli, Jeffrey A., Guthrie, Guy L.
• Primary Examiner(s): Orgad; Edan
• Assistant Examiner(s): Vu; Hoang-Chuong Q
• Application Number:
  US11/055,366
• Publication Number:
  US 20060176906A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,447 Days
• Field of Search: 370/400, 370/401, 370/402, 370/392, 370/394, 370/437, 370/462, 370/468, 712/203, 712/204, 712/205, 712/225, 710/100, 710/107, 710/113, 710/240, 709/249, 709/248, 709/250, 709/226
• US Class Current: 370/389
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 12/0831 using a bus scheme, e.g. with bus monitoring or watching means
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 12/0897 with two or more cache hierarchy levels with multilevel cache hierarchies G06F12/0811
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 15/177 Initialisation or configuration control processor initialisation G06F9/4405

Abstract

A data processing system includes a plurality of processing units coupled for communication by a communication link and a configuration register. The configuration register has a plurality of different settings each corresponding to a respective one of a plurality of different link information allocations. Information is communicated over the communication link in accordance with a particular link information allocation among the plurality of link information allocations determined by a respective setting of the configuration register.

Claims

1. A data processing system, comprising:

a plurality of processing units coupled for communication by a communication link;

a configuration register having a plurality of different settings each corresponding to a respective one of a plurality of different link information allocations, wherein information is communicated over said communication link in accordance with a particular link information allocation among said plurality of link information allocations determined by a respective setting of said configuration register;

wherein said particular link information allocation allocates bandwidth of said communication link in a repeating sequence of fixed-length, multi-cycle frames;

wherein a frame of a first link information allocation among said plurality of link information allocations includes payload data and a data tag identifying a destination of said payload data, wherein said data tag precedes said payload data by more than one cycle; and

means for automatically setting said configuration register in response to detecting a type of workload.

2. The data processing system of claim 1, wherein a frame of a first link information allocation among said plurality of link information allocations includes multiple address tenures per data tenure.

3. The data processing system of claim 1, wherein a frame of a first link information allocation includes a transaction type field for indicating a type of a request, a master tag field for identifying a master of said request, an address field for identifying a request address for said request, and a response field for providing a response to a previous request.

4. A processing unit, comprising:

a processor core;

interconnect logic coupled to a communication link coupling the processing unit to another processing unit for communication; and

a configuration register having a plurality of different settings each corresponding to a respective one of a plurality of different link information allocations, wherein information is communicated over said communication link in accordance with a particular link information allocation among said plurality of link information allocations determined by a respective setting of said configuration register,;

wherein said particular link information allocation allocates bandwidth of said communication link in a repeating sequence of fixed-length, multi-cycle frames;

wherein a frame of a first link information allocation among said plurality of link information allocations includes payload data and a data tag identifying a destination of said payload data, wherein said data tag precedes said payload data by more than one cycle; and

means for automatically setting said configuration register in response to detecting a type of workload.

5. The processing unit of claim 4, wherein a frame of a first link information allocation among said plurality of link information allocations includes multiple address tenures per data tenure.

6. The processing unit of claim 4, wherein a frame of a first link information allocation includes a transaction type field for indicating a type of a request, a master tag field for identifying a master of said request, an address field for identifying a request address for said request, and a response field for providing a response to a previous request.