National Instruments Corporation

Jason W Frels

Jonathan W Hearn

Eric L Singer

Rodney D Greenstreet

Mark R Wetzel

Gabriel L Narus

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

Techniques and systems for synchronizing a clock via a backplane. An apparatus includes a backplane, a clock coupled to or included in the backplane, a synchronization interface, and at least one processing element coupled to the clock via the backplane and coupled to or including the synchronization interface. The at least one processing element may be configured to compare first time information received from the clock via the backplane with second time information received from the synchronization interface. The second time information may be associated with an external clock. The at least one processing element may determine adjustment information based on the comparison and synchronize the clock with an external clock using the adjustment information, via the backplane. The apparatus may be a PXIe chassis. The clock output may be sent to modules plugged into the backplane in order to synchronize them with an external chassis clock, for example.

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Leander, TX, United States of America

Jason W Frels