System for identifying communication sequences transmitted across

Abstract

A system and method for asynchronously receiving 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 do not have sequence numbers, therefore, the receiver determines which frames are part of a frame group by the arrival times of the individual frames. The transceivers for each member of the parallel bus examine the received bit stream to extract frames and continuous sequences. For each member of the parallel bus there are independent receive buffers, and these buffers are controlled by independent states. The states inhibit erroneously generated frames from corrupting the contents of the receive buffers and inhibit the loading of the buffers after errors on the link. These states also control the loading of the receive buffers after retransmission of a buffer area. The information from the individual frames of the frame group is assembled in the proper sequence by another element in the channel. This element also suppresses notification of the intermediate frame groups when multiple frame groups are used to transmit a buffer area.