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:
Sep. 24, 1996
Filed:
Nov. 04, 1993
Thomas A Gregg, Highland, NY (US);
Joseph M Hoke, Millerton, NY (US);
Kulwant M Pandey, Lagrangeville, NY (US);
International Business Machines Corporation, Armonk, NY (US);
Abstract
A system and method for asynchronously transmitting data blocks, in parallel, across multiple fibers in a serial manner. Frame groups are provided as a mechanism to transmit associated data serially on each fiber and tie the data being transmitted together. The frame groups can be prematurely ended on any 256 byte block boundary for several purposes, and all the frames of a given group must contain the same number of information field data words. Allowing frame groups to be ended on arbitrary block boundaries allows their transmission to start before all of the information field for the frame group has been received from a shared main processor storage. This capability of ending frame groups also allows high priority frame groups to interrupt the transmission of a relatively long data frame. Finally, the capability to end the frame group protects the information field of a stalled frame group since the CRC is sent and the idle sequence is resumed. Using multiple, independently clocked transmitters improves the fault tolerance of the link but also makes it difficult to end all frame of the frame group on the same block boundary. This problem is also solved by keeping track of the data sent to the multiple transmit buffers.