National Instruments Corporation

Eric L Singer

Rodney W Cummings

Jonathan W Hearn

Jason W Frels

Andrew C Thomson

William R Pitts

Matthew M Brzezinski

Khasid Ali Khan

Aditya K Rathi

Daniel Liu

Caleb G Wells

Mark Gruetzner

Yiqi Jiang

Bus enumeration of a switch fabric bus may be performed without assigning bus numbers to unused switch ports and/or corresponding slots to which the unused switch ports are routed. Accordingly, switches coupled to a switch fabric bus in a chassis may link-train with corresponding slots in the chassis in an attempt to establish active connections with devices coupled to the slots. Unused switch fabric bus lanes running from the switches to unused slots may be identified, and the unused switch ports corresponding to the unused switch fabric bus lanes may be disabled. During a subsequent bus enumeration procedure for the switch fabric bus, bus numbers may be allocated to the identified used switch ports (or corresponding used slots) but not to the identified unused switch ports (or corresponding unused slots). The link training, used/unused switch port identification, and bus enumeration may all be performed each time the chassis is reset.

Switch pruning in a switch fabric bus chassis

Various embodiments of a system, method, and memory-medium provide for configuration of a programmable waveform that allows for communication with one of a plurality of different target devices. The programmable waveform comprises one or more waveform parameters and one or more waveform lines. The waveform lines may comprise control lines and/or data lines. One or more of the waveform parameters may be set in response to user input, and corresponding signals based on the waveform lines may be generated in order to communicate with a target device selected from a variety of different possible target devices. Waveform parameters may include one or more of: setup time, hold time, lead time, trail time, idle time, clock frequency, clock duty cycle, number of data bits per transmission, number of data lines, pulse width, polarity, and phase.

Programmable waveform technology for interfacing to disparate devices

Device driven transfer of data from the device to a memory of a host. The device may receive data from one or more data sources. The device may transfer at least a portion of the data to the memory of the host coupled to the device. Transferring may be performed without an initiation of the transfer by the host. Additionally, transferring may include, for each of the one or more data sources, determining a portion of the memory medium corresponding to the data source, determining a latest value for the data source from the data, and storing the latest value for the data source in the portion of the memory. Storing the latest value may include overwriting a previous value of the data source when the previous value exists in the portion of the memory medium.

Single point, device driven data transmission for a real time application

System and method for a four-slot asynchronous communication mechanism with decreased latency. The system may include a host system and a client device. The host may comprise a data structure with four (two pairs of) slots. The client may comprise first information indicating a status of write operations to the data structure on the host and second information usable to determine a slot that should be written to. If the first information indicates that the second information is accurate, the client may determine which slot in the data structure should be written to based on information stored only on the client device. The determined slot may be the slot that has not been written to more recently of the pair of slots that has not been read from most recently. The client may write data to the determined slot. The client may update at least a portion of the information stored on the client device to reflect the write of data to the determined slot.

Four-slot asynchronous communication mechanism with decreased latency

System and method for a four-slot asynchronous communication mechanism with increased throughput. The system may include a host system and a client device. The host may comprise a data structure with four (two pairs of) slots and first information indicating a status of read operations from the data structure by the host. The client may read the first information from the host. The client may read second information from a local memory. The second information may indicate a status of write operations to the data structure by the client. The client may determine a slot of the data structure to be written. The slot may be determined based on the first information and the second information and may be the slot which has not been written to more recently of the pair of slots which has not been read from most recently. The client may increment a value of a counter. The value of the counter may be useable to indicate which slot has been written to most recently. The client may write data to the determined slot in the data structure on the host. The data may include the value of the counter. The client may update the second information in the local memory to indicate that the determined slot has been written to most recently.

Four-slot asynchronous communication mechanism with increased throughput

A system and method for communicating with a device over an external transmission medium. The system may include a host computer system, including a user application, a serial bus interface driver, and a first portion of an interface driver. The host computer may include a serial bus host controller. A serial bus may couple the serial bus host controller to a serial bus interface, which may include an interface connector adapted to couple to the device, wherein the serial bus interface may be operable to store and execute a second portion of the interface driver. When the user application generates an API function call, the first portion of the interface driver may generate a frame of interface commands that are transferred to the second portion of the interface driver for execution, thereby causing signals to be transmitted over an interface bus to the device.

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Austin, TX, United States of America

Eric L Singer