The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Jun. 20, 1995
Filed:
Jan. 14, 1994
Brian R Bennett, Laguna Niguel, CA (US);
AST Research, Inc., Irvine, CA (US);
Abstract
An improved signaling protocol for use in a multiprocessor system enables concurrent access to a common system bus during an I/O bus access. This reduces the system bus idling time without introducing complexities into the system bus architecture which might otherwise reduce the overall bus bandwidth increase. The improved bus architecture uses a system generated I/O bus busy (IOBUS.sub.-- BSY-) signal to indicate to all of the processors that the I/O bus is in use and that all other I/O requests must be held until the current transaction is completed. By preventing the other processors from executing an I/O request, the system bus does not have to be remain idle and can be used for memory-to-processor and for processor-to-processor transactions while the I/O bus is in use. By reducing the amount of time that the system bus is idle, the overall system bus performance is greatly increased.