Texas Instruments Corporation

Warren S Graber

George L Brantingham

Ashok H Someshwar

A data processing system having a bus system for data communication employs a bus splitting circuit. This bus splitting circuit permits selective connection and isolation of individual buses of the bus system. A more flexible assortment of data communications paths among logic blocks coupled to the bus system is permitted by this arrangement in which some logic blocks may be coupled during one state of the bus splitting circuit and decoupled during the other state of the bus splitting circuit. By separating some of the buses via the bus splitting circuit, dual data transfers using the split buses is possible. In a preferred embodiment at least one of the logic blocks is a memory which is coupled to more than one of the buses, thus permitting simultaneous read and write operations, dual read operations or dual write operations.

Data processing system having multiple buses

An address decode scheme decodes address lines using a minimum number of electrical conductors and minimum area on the chip. Instead of decoding the true and the complementary signals of each address input using a PLA or static gate, the present decode scheme uses two sets of programmable transistors for respectively detecting zeros and ones on the address lines and for generating selected high and low decode signals in conjunction with precharge, discharge, and control transistors. This invention is equally effective in CMOS, NMOS, or PMOS technologies.

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St. Joseph, MI, United States of America

Warren S Graber