Adaptec, Inc.

Andrew J Roy

Ebrahim Hashemi

Lawrence J Lamers

Charles A Monia

The present invention provides methods for addressing an extended number of peripheral devices over a bus. A bus having an N-bit datapath is provided in a computer system. An extended address space is defined for a set of extended peripheral devices by assigning a bus ID to each extended peripheral device. Each bus ID includes a group ID and a group member ID. Each group ID and group member ID also indicates a priority of said associated device. One or more peripheral devices arbitrate for the bus. In this process, a peripheral device having the highest priority group ID and the highest priority group member ID among the arbitrating devices wins the arbitration. After arbitration, the winning device selects, for transferring data, a device by placing on the bus the bus IDs of the selecting and selected devices.

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San Jose, CA, United States of America

Andrew J Roy