Qualcomm Incorporated

International Business Machines Corporation

Shaul Yohai Yifrach

Amit Gil

James Lionel Panian

Michael Bar-Joshua

Etai Adar

Ofer Rosenberg

Richard Dominic Wietfeldt

Giora Biran

Piyush Chunilal Patel

Yiftach Benjamini

Assaf Shacham

Tomer Rafael Ben-Chen

Alexander Mesh

Lalan Jee Mishra

Bruce Leroy Beukema

Vadim Makhervaks

Mohit Kishore Prasad

Ilya Granovsky

Sharon Graif

Thomas Zeng

Tal Sostheim

Eyal Skulsky

Dan Gilboa Waizman

Boaz Yeger

Mark Epshtein

Mvv Anil Krishna

Deepak Jindal

Ayala Miller

Itamar Tsachi

Atar Peyser

Ilya Gransovky

The disclosure includes systems and methods for bus control. A method comprises receiving a data exchange request, wherein the data exchange request includes a data exchange tag that identifies a data exchange, splitting the data exchange into a plurality of fractional data transactions, providing one or more bus commands to a system bus, receiving, at the bus controller, one or more acceptance notifications indicating that the one or more of the plurality have been accepted by the system bus, assigning transaction identifiers (TIDs) corresponding to the one or more of the plurality of fractional data transactions, receiving one or more completion notifications indicating that the one or more of the plurality have been completed, determining that each of the plurality of fractional data transactions associated with the data exchange tag have been completed, and notifying the processor that the requested data exchange has been completed.

Bus controller and related methods

Systems and methods for time synchronization for clocks separated by a communication link allow a master clock to be positioned at a downstream-facing port or an upstream-facing port and to send synchronization commands with an associated time stamp embedded in transport layer protocol (TLP) prefixes to a slave clock. The slave clock may update its time value based on the received time stamp. Further, the slave may calculate a round trip delay between the master clock and the slave clock and use this delay calculation to correct the slave clock. The delay calculation may likewise be made using TLP prefixes. By using TLP prefixes in this fashion, the time synchronization can piggyback on existing message traffic, which reduces signaling overhead. Likewise, by using the TLP prefixes, the time synchronization may be initiated from either an upstream-facing port or a downstream-facing port.

Time synchronization for clocks separated by a communication link

A system for low-speed Peripheral Component Interconnect (PCI) Express (PCIe) systems, while maintaining both lower level physical layer (PHY) pin requirements and upper layer functionality being capable of both differential and single-ended signaling modes optimized for power savings. An apparatus includes an integrated circuit (IC) adapted to be connected to a Peripheral Component Interconnect (PCI) Express (PCIe) bus. The IC includes a control block selects between differential and single-ended signaling for the PCIe bus. The single-ended signaling is transmitted through existing pins of the IC that are coupled to the PCIe bus for differential signaling when single-ended signaling is selected for the PCIe bus.

Low power PCIe

Extended message signaled interrupts (MSI) data are disclosed. In one aspect, MSI bits are modified to include a system level identifier. In an exemplary aspect, an upper sixteen bits of the MSI message data are modified to be the system level identifier. By providing the system level identifier within the MSI message data, an interrupt controller can verify the interrupt source.

Extended message signaled interrupts (MSI) message data

Alternate acknowledgment (ACK) signals in a coalescing Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) system are disclosed. In one aspect, a network interface card (NIC) examines packet payloads, and the NIC generates an ACK signal for a sending server before sending a coalesced packet to an internal processor. Further, the NIC may examine incoming packets and send an ACK signal to the internal processor for ACK signals that are received from the sending server before sending the coalesced packet to the internal processor. By extracting and sending the ACK signals before sending the corresponding payloads in the coalesced packet, latency that would otherwise be incurred waiting for the ACK signal is eliminated. Elimination of such latency may improve network performance and may provide power savings.

Alternate acknowledgment (ACK) signals in a coalescing transmission control protocol/internet protocol (TCP/IP) system

A replacement physical layer (PHY) for low-speed Peripheral Component Interconnect (PCI) Express (PCIe) systems is disclosed. In one aspect, an analog PHY of a conventional PCIe system is replaced with a digital PHY. The digital PHY is coupled to a media access control (MAC) logic by a PHY interface for PCIe (PIPE) directly. In further exemplary aspects, the digital PHY may be a complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) PHY that includes a serializer and a deserializer. Replacing the analog PHY with the digital PHY allows entry and exit from low-power modes to occur much quicker, resulting in substantial power savings and reduced latency. Because the digital PHY is operable with low-speed communication, the digital PHY can maintain sufficient bandwidth that communication is not unnecessarily impacted by digital logic of the digital PHY.

Replacement physical layer (PHY) for low-speed peripheral component interconnect (PCI) express (PCIe) systems

Aspects disclosed in the detailed description include inline cryptographic engine (ICE) for peripheral component interconnect express (PCIe). In this regard, in one aspect, an ICE is provided in a PCIe root complex (RC) in a host system. The PCIe RC is configured to receive at least one transport layer packet (TLP), which includes a TLP prefix, from a storage device. In a non-limiting example, the TLP prefix includes transaction-specific information that may be used by the ICE to provide data encryption and decryption. By providing the ICE in the PCIe RC and receiving the transaction-specific information in the TLP prefix, it is possible to encrypt and decrypt data in the PCIe RC in compliance with established standards, thus ensuring adequate protection during data exchange between the PCIe RC and the storage device.

Inline cryptographic engine (ICE) for peripheral component interconnect express (PCIe) systems

Communicating transaction-specific attributes in a peripheral component interconnect express (PCIe) system is disclosed. A PCIe system includes a host system and at least one PCIe endpoint. The PCIe endpoint is configured to determine one or more transaction-specific attributes that can improve efficiency and performance of a predefined host transaction. In this regard, in one aspect, the PCIe endpoint encodes the transaction-specific attributes in a transaction layer packet (TLP) prefix of at least one PCIe TLP and provides the PCIe TLP to the host system. In another aspect, a PCIe root complex (RC) in the host system is configured to detect and extract the transaction-specific attributes from the TLP prefix of the PCIe TLP received from the PCIe endpoint. By communicating the transaction-specific attributes in the TLP prefix of the PCIe TLP, it is possible to improve efficiency and performance of the PCIe system without violating the existing PCIe standard.

Communicating transaction-specific attributes in a peripheral component interconnect express (PCIe) system

Hardware-based translation lookaside buffer (TLB) invalidation techniques are disclosed. A host system is configured to exchange data with a peripheral component interconnect express PCIE) endpoint (EP). A memory management unit (MMU), which is a hardware element, is included in the host system to provide address translation according to at least one TLB. In one aspect, the MMU is configured to invalidate the at least one TLB in response to receiving at least one TLB invalidation command from the PCIE EP. In another aspect, the PCIE EP is configured to determine that the at least one TLB needs to be invalidated and provide the TLB invalidation command to invalidate the at least one TLB. By implementing hardware-based TLB invalidation in the host system, it is possible to reduce TLB invalidation delay, thus leading to increased data throughput, reduced power consumption, and improved user experience.

Hardware-based translation lookaside buffer (TLB) invalidation

Hardware-based packet processing circuitry is provided. In this regard, hardware-based packet processing circuitry includes header processing circuitry and payload processing circuitry. The hardware-based packet processing circuitry receives a header portion and a payload portion of an incoming packet in a first packet format. The header processing circuitry and the payload processing circuitry process the header portion and the payload portion to form a processed header portion and a processed payload portion, respectively. The hardware-based packet processing circuitry generates an outgoing packet in a second packet format based on the processed header portion and the processed payload portion. By processing the incoming packet separately in the header processing circuitry and the payload processing circuitry, it is possible to accelerate selected steps (e.g., ciphering/deciphering, compression/de-compression, checksum, etc.) of packet processing via dedicated hardware functional block(s), thus reducing computing resource requirement and overhead associated with software-based packet processing.

Hardware-based packet processing circuitry

Systems and methods are disclosed for improving the performance of cache memory in a computer system by dynamically selecting an index for caching main memory while an application is running. A disclosed example of a memory system includes a cache including a data array, a primary tag array, and at least one secondary tag array. A currently selected index is used to index data bits to the data array and tag bits to the primary tag array. The performance of at least one candidate index is evaluated by indexing tag bits to the secondary tag array, without caching any data using the candidate index while the candidate index is under evaluation. If the candidate index has a better hit rate than the currently selected index, the memory system switches to using the candidate index to cache data.

Dynamic index selection in a hardware cache

A method placing items routing wiring pursuant to integrated circuit specifications to create an integrated circuit design. Once the initially placed design is legalized, rather that just starting wiring routing, the method identifies books in the integrated circuit design which contain blocked items. The method allows the routing process to be paused temporarily, and for the items to be moved to a certain extent. This movement process is controlled (limited according to signal power output by the associated books) so that the timing of the integrated circuit design is not affected by any such 'mid-routing' movement. If the books do not have any blocked items, the process continues to route wires between the items and the books. If at any point before or during the routing of the wires it is found that the books do have blocked items, the process pauses the routing of the wires and performs any number of different processes to solve the blocked item situation (unblock the blocked items).

Placement driven routing

Device, system, and method of handling delayed transactions. For example, an apparatus to handle delayed transactions in a computing system includes: a slave unit adapted to pseudo-randomly reject a request received from a master unit.

Device, system, and method of handling delayed transactions

Some embodiments include, for example, devices, systems, and methods of handling transactions. In some demonstrative embodiments, an apparatus to handle transactions in a computing system may include a master unit to arbitrate between read and write requests to be issued over a request bus according to at least first and second arbitration schemes. A first ratio between read and write requests issued by the master unit according to the first arbitration scheme may be different from a second ratio between read and write requests issued by the master unit according to the second arbitration scheme.

Growing community of inventors

Haifa, Israel

Shaul Yohai Yifrach