International Business Machines Corporation

Herbert Rivera-Sanchez

James Johnson Allen, Jr

Ronald J Cooper

William Lloyd McNeil

Douglas H Cox

Terri L Tomlinson

A system and method for controlling a communications adapter interface such that supplemental data can be interleaved with data being transferred. The interleaving is performed in a manner such that the supplemental data is transparent to the data mover portion of the communications adapter. The supplemental data can be transferred in either read or write cycles that are interleaved at the beginning, in the middle, or at the end of data bursts or block data transfers. As a result of the interleaving, the slave interface bus is more fully utilized because arbitration and bus ownership changes do not create unused cycles. The interleaving is accomplished by temporarily halting an existing transfer of data and transferring the requested supplemental data while the data transfer is halted. After the supplemental data is transferred, the transfer of the balance of the data block is then allowed to continue. In other words, the present invention 'steals' a cycle from the data transferror and uses this cycle to transfer supplemental data.

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Durham, NC, United States of America

Herbert Rivera-Sanchez