Intel Corporation

Siemens Ak.

Gerhard Bier

Ronald J Ebersole

David B Johnson

Mark S Myers

David L Budde

Karl-Heinz Honeck

Sven-Axel Nilsson

In a computer system having a configuration which is subject to change, because of failure replacement, updating, or expansion, it is necessary to provide means for loading parameters carrying the present system configuration into the active modules of the system. In this manner, all parallel processors are identified and recognized and depending upon system demands, used because of the parameter loading arrangement of this computer system. Serial lines are provided for loading the parameters into the active modules.

Arrangement for loading the parameters into active modules in a computer

A data processor bus in which information is transferred between agents attached to the bus by issuing request packets that request data from an agent on the bus and reply packets that return data requested by a request packet. A control method mixes request-and-reply packets on the bus by determining the use of a next-bus cycle using arbitration, reply deferral, and specification lines and the state of a grant queue and a pipe queue in accordance with a specified protocol. A request is forced to take the next available bus cycle upon the condition that there is an agent identified in the great queue and the pipeline queue is not full. A reply packet is forced to take the next available bus cycle upon the condition that the pipeline queue is full. A reply packet is forced to take the next available bus cycle upon the condition that the grant queue is empty and the pipeline queue is not empty. Giving requests precedence over replies to allows the pipeline to be kept as full as possible. A replying agent assigned to the highest priority slot 1 in the pipeline queue is allowed to defer its own slot in the pipeline queue until a later time to thereby permit a transaction in Slot 2 of the pipeline queue to be completed before the one ahead of it.

Method of increasing the bandwidth of a packet bus by reordering reply

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Herxheim, Germany

Gerhard Bier