Marvell International Limited

Texas Instruments Corporation

Arthur Miller

Moinul H Khan

Mark Norman Fullerton

Anitha Kona

Sudheer Prasad

Baireddy Vijayavardhan

Krishnan Ramabhadran

Subhash Madireddy

In one embodiment the present invention includes a method and apparatus for enabling a main core and one or more co-processors to operate in a de-coupled mode, thereby facilitating the execution of two or more instruction threads in parallel. A co-processor, according to an embodiment of the invention, has a coupling manager including a loop buffer for storing instructions which can be independently fetched and executed by the co-processor when operating in de-coupled mode. In addition, the coupling manager includes a loop descriptor and a counter/condition descriptor. The loop descriptor and condition descriptor work in conjunction with one another to determine what, if any, action should be taken when a co-processor is in a particular processing state, for example, as indicated by a counter keeping track of loop processing.

Method and apparatus for programmable coupling between CPU and co-processor

An aspect of the present invention provides multiple switches in a transceiver, which enable pins provided for transmission and reception to be connected to either a transmit port or a receive port, as desired during operation. As a result, the transceiver can be auto-configured to connect the specific pin, on which signals are being received, to the receive port. Similarly, the transceiver can be auto-configured to connect the specific pin, on which the signals need to be transmitted, to the transmit port. Various design considerations in providing such switches are also described.

Auto-configuration to connect transmit and receive ports to corresponding ports on the other end irrespective of cable connection mis-match

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Austin, TX, United States of America

Arthur Miller