Open high speed bus for microcomputer system
First Claim
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1. A local system bus for a micro-processor based computer system including a plurality of controllers connected between the local system bus and at least one micro-processor, a system memory or an I/O bus, one of the controllers being a bus master and another being a bus slave during a bus transaction, the local system bus comprising:
- lines for carrying an address driven by the bus master and received by the bus slave;
lines for carrying data driven by the bus master and received by the bus slave during a write transaction or driven by the bus slave and received by the bus master during a read transaction;
lines for carrying signals generated by the bus master and received by the bus slave, for defining a transaction in progress;
lines for carrying control signals for micro-processor operations;
lines for carrying status signals asserted by the bus slave for indicating a status of the bus slave further comprising lines for carrying interrupt signals; and
lines for carrying arbitration signals, wherein the lines for carrying arbitration signals comprise a line for carrying a bus hold request for permitting another controller to gain control of the local system bus.
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Abstract
An open high-speed local system bus for a microcomputer system which is decoupled from I/O and provides a consistent interface to the CPU subsystem, memory subsystem, graphics subsystem and peripheral subsystem. The local system bus supports discrete and burst transactions, pipelining in both the transactions, multiple microprocessor and distributed interrupts.
149 Citations
44 Claims
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1. A local system bus for a micro-processor based computer system including a plurality of controllers connected between the local system bus and at least one micro-processor, a system memory or an I/O bus, one of the controllers being a bus master and another being a bus slave during a bus transaction, the local system bus comprising:
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lines for carrying an address driven by the bus master and received by the bus slave; lines for carrying data driven by the bus master and received by the bus slave during a write transaction or driven by the bus slave and received by the bus master during a read transaction; lines for carrying signals generated by the bus master and received by the bus slave, for defining a transaction in progress; lines for carrying control signals for micro-processor operations; lines for carrying status signals asserted by the bus slave for indicating a status of the bus slave further comprising lines for carrying interrupt signals; and lines for carrying arbitration signals, wherein the lines for carrying arbitration signals comprise a line for carrying a bus hold request for permitting another controller to gain control of the local system bus. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38)
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39. A micro-processor based computer system including at least a first micro-processor and a cache memory, a system memory, and input/output devices, the computer system comprising:
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a local system bus for connecting the micro-processor to the cache memory; an input/output bus for connecting to the input/output devices; a first controller for connecting the local system bus to the I/O bus; wherein the local system bus operates at a higher data rate than does the input/output bus; at least one cache controller connected between the first micro-processor and the local system bus; and a second cache controller connected between the local system bus and the system memory. - View Dependent Claims (40, 41, 42, 43, 44)
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Specification