Qualcomm Incorporated

Amit Gil

Shaul Yohai Yifrach

Richard Dominic Wietfeldt

Lior Amarilio

Lalan Jee Mishra

James Lionel Panian

Anup Kuzhiyil

Lalit Yerramilli Raju

Mohit Kishore Prasad

Assaf Shacham

Ofer Rosenberg

Oded Schnitzer

Srinivasan Balasubramanian

George Alan Wiley

Piyush Chunilal Patel

Helena Deirdre O'Shea

Yiftach Benjamini

Gary Chang

Saravana Krishnan Kannan

Luiza Timariu

Suhas A Pai

Yanru Li

Rotem Cooper

Azzedine Touzni

Hyunsuk Shin

Sharon Graif

Nir Gerber

Yuval Corey Hershko

Hung Quoc Vuong

Tomer Rafael Ben-Chen

Erez Tsidon

Deepak Khandelwal

Haim Snapy

Henry Laurel Sanchez

Boaz Moskovich

Daehak Kim

David E Wang

Vinay Jain

Dan Gilboa Waizman

Ayala Miller

Henri Dagbegnon Bahini

Shahbaz Nazrul

Zhilin Liu

Gopal Agarwal

Henri Bahini Dagbegnon

Kishalay Haidar

Oren Reiss

Deepak Jindal

Systems and methods for chip operation using serial peripheral interface (SPI) without a chip select pin are disclosed. A communication link between a host and a device may include a clock line, a host to device line, and a device to host line. The host may signal a start or stop condition using the clock line and the device may send an acknowledgment of the host's signaling through the device to host line. Once acknowledgment is made, the host may then signal on the host to device line using a protocol such as SPI.

Systems and methods for chip operation using serial peripheral interface (SPI) without a chip select pin

Systems and methods for time synchronization for clocks separated by a communication link allow a master clock to be positioned at a downstream-facing port or an upstream-facing port and to send synchronization commands with an associated time stamp embedded in transport layer protocol (TLP) prefixes to a slave clock. The slave clock may update its time value based on the received time stamp. Further, the slave may calculate a round trip delay between the master clock and the slave clock and use this delay calculation to correct the slave clock. The delay calculation may likewise be made using TLP prefixes. By using TLP prefixes in this fashion, the time synchronization can piggyback on existing message traffic, which reduces signaling overhead. Likewise, by using the TLP prefixes, the time synchronization may be initiated from either an upstream-facing port or a downstream-facing port.

Time synchronization for clocks separated by a communication link

A system for low-speed Peripheral Component Interconnect (PCI) Express (PCIe) systems, while maintaining both lower level physical layer (PHY) pin requirements and upper layer functionality being capable of both differential and single-ended signaling modes optimized for power savings. An apparatus includes an integrated circuit (IC) adapted to be connected to a Peripheral Component Interconnect (PCI) Express (PCIe) bus. The IC includes a control block selects between differential and single-ended signaling for the PCIe bus. The single-ended signaling is transmitted through existing pins of the IC that are coupled to the PCIe bus for differential signaling when single-ended signaling is selected for the PCIe bus.

Low power PCIe

Extended message signaled interrupts (MSI) data are disclosed. In one aspect, MSI bits are modified to include a system level identifier. In an exemplary aspect, an upper sixteen bits of the MSI message data are modified to be the system level identifier. By providing the system level identifier within the MSI message data, an interrupt controller can verify the interrupt source.

Extended message signaled interrupts (MSI) message data

System, methods and apparatus are described that can improve available bandwidth on a SoundWire bus without increasing the number of pins used by the SoundWire bus. A method performed at a master device coupled to a SoundWire bus includes providing a clock signal by a first master device over a clock line of a SoundWire bus to a first slave device and a second slave device coupled to the SoundWire bus, transmitting first control information from the first master device to the first slave device over a first data line of the SoundWire bus, and transmitting second control information from the first master device to the second slave device over a second data line of the SoundWire bus. The first control information may be different from the second control information and is transmitted concurrently with the second control information.

High bandwidth soundwire master with multiple primary data lanes

Alternate acknowledgment (ACK) signals in a coalescing Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) system are disclosed. In one aspect, a network interface card (NIC) examines packet payloads, and the NIC generates an ACK signal for a sending server before sending a coalesced packet to an internal processor. Further, the NIC may examine incoming packets and send an ACK signal to the internal processor for ACK signals that are received from the sending server before sending the coalesced packet to the internal processor. By extracting and sending the ACK signals before sending the corresponding payloads in the coalesced packet, latency that would otherwise be incurred waiting for the ACK signal is eliminated. Elimination of such latency may improve network performance and may provide power savings.

Alternate acknowledgment (ACK) signals in a coalescing transmission control protocol/internet protocol (TCP/IP) system

Systems, methods, and apparatus are described that provide for communicating coexistence messages over a multi-drop serial bus. A data communication method includes configuring a common memory map at each of a plurality of devices coupled to a serial bus, receiving at a first device coupled to the serial bus, first coexistence information directed to a second device coupled to the serial bus, generating at the first device, a coexistence message that includes the first coexistence information, and transmitting the coexistence message to the second device over the serial bus. The first coexistence information in the coexistence message may be addressed to a location in the common memory map calculated based on a destination address associated with the first coexistence information and a unique identifier of the first device.

Function-specific communication on a multi-drop bus for coexistence management

Systems and methods for handling silence in audio streams are disclosed. In one aspect, a transmitter detects a halt in an audio stream. After detection of the halt in the audio stream, the transmitter embeds a silence signal into the audio stream and transmits the silence signal to associated receivers. The associated receivers may respond to the embedded silence signal by 'playing' silence or by using the silence signal to activate a silence protocol. In either event, the associated receivers do not receive the original audio halt and do not produce an unwanted audio artifact.

Systems and methods for handling silence in audio streams

In a device comprising a serial bus and a plurality of devices, register/address mappings and/or unique group identifiers are used to convey additional information in messages/datagrams over the serial bus without explicitly sending such information in the message/datagram. Such register/address mappings may be done beforehand, and in conjunction with group-specific identifiers, may reduce transmission latency by keeping the size of the messages/datagrams small. Since all devices on the serial bus have prior knowledge of such register/address mappings and/or group-specific identifiers, recipient devices are able to infer information from the group-specific identifiers and/or register/address sent in each message/datagram that is not explicitly sent within such message/datagram.

Efficient technique for communicating between devices over a multi-drop bus

A replacement physical layer (PHY) for low-speed Peripheral Component Interconnect (PCI) Express (PCIe) systems is disclosed. In one aspect, an analog PHY of a conventional PCIe system is replaced with a digital PHY. The digital PHY is coupled to a media access control (MAC) logic by a PHY interface for PCIe (PIPE) directly. In further exemplary aspects, the digital PHY may be a complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) PHY that includes a serializer and a deserializer. Replacing the analog PHY with the digital PHY allows entry and exit from low-power modes to occur much quicker, resulting in substantial power savings and reduced latency. Because the digital PHY is operable with low-speed communication, the digital PHY can maintain sufficient bandwidth that communication is not unnecessarily impacted by digital logic of the digital PHY.

Replacement physical layer (PHY) for low-speed peripheral component interconnect (PCI) express (PCIe) systems

Aspects disclosed in the detailed description include scheduled universal serial bus (USB) low-power operations. In this regard, in one aspect, a USB host controller determines a low-power operation schedule for a USB client device. The low-power operation schedule comprises one or more scheduled low-power operation periods, each corresponding to a respective entry time and a respective exit time. The USB host controller communicates the low-power operation schedule to the USB client device using one or more USB standard packets. By scheduling the one or more scheduled low-power operation periods with respective entry and exit times, the USB host controller or the USB client controller is able to start and end the one or more scheduled low-power operation periods without incurring additional signaling, thus improving efficiency of the USB low-power operation. Further, by communicating the low-power operation schedule using USB standard packets, it is possible to preserve compatibility with USB standards.

Universal serial bus (USB) host and client devices for supporting scheduled low-power operations

Communicating transaction-specific attributes in a peripheral component interconnect express (PCIe) system is disclosed. A PCIe system includes a host system and at least one PCIe endpoint. The PCIe endpoint is configured to determine one or more transaction-specific attributes that can improve efficiency and performance of a predefined host transaction. In this regard, in one aspect, the PCIe endpoint encodes the transaction-specific attributes in a transaction layer packet (TLP) prefix of at least one PCIe TLP and provides the PCIe TLP to the host system. In another aspect, a PCIe root complex (RC) in the host system is configured to detect and extract the transaction-specific attributes from the TLP prefix of the PCIe TLP received from the PCIe endpoint. By communicating the transaction-specific attributes in the TLP prefix of the PCIe TLP, it is possible to improve efficiency and performance of the PCIe system without violating the existing PCIe standard.

Communicating transaction-specific attributes in a peripheral component interconnect express (PCIe) system

SoundWire-based embedded debugging in an electronic system is provided. In this regard, in one aspect, a SoundWire slave circuit receives a SoundWire data input signal over a SoundWire bus including two physical wires. The SoundWire data input signal includes a plurality of debug configuration bits in assigned SoundWire bitslots. The SoundWire slave circuit generates a plurality debug input bits required for debugging the SoundWire slave circuit based on the debug configuration bits received in the assigned SoundWire bitslots. In another aspect, the SoundWire slave circuit returns a SoundWire data output signal, which includes a debug output bit in an assigned SoundWire bitslot, over the SoundWire bus. By receiving debugging configurations and returning debugging results over the SoundWire bus, it is possible to debug the SoundWire slave circuit with a reduced number of physical pins, thus helping to reduce the overall pin count and footprint of the electronic device.

Soundwire-based embedded debugging in an electronic device

Growing community of inventors

Zichron Yaakov, Israel

Amit Gil