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.

Date of Patent:
Jun. 23, 1998

Filed:

Mar. 04, 1996
Applicant:
Inventors:

Michael Scott Allen, Austin, TX (US);

Ravi Kumar Arimilli, Round Rock, TX (US);

John Michael Kaiser, Cedar Park, TX (US);

William Kurt Lewchuk, Austin, TX (US);

Assignees:

International Business Machines Corporation, Armonk, NY (US);

Motorola, Inc., Schaumburg, IL (US);

Attorneys:
Primary Examiner:
Int. Cl.
CPC ...
G06F / ;
U.S. Cl.
CPC ...
371 401 ; 371 402 ; 371 491 ;
Abstract

A system and method are provided that use a determination of bad data parity and the state of an error signal (Derr.sub.--) as a functional signal indicating a specific type of error in a particular system component. If the Derr.sub.-- signal is active, the parity error recognized by the CPU was caused by a correctable condition in a data providing device. In this instance, the processor will read the corrected data from a buffer without reissuing a fetch request. When the CPU finds a parity error, but Derr.sub.-- is not active a more serious fault condition is identified (bus error or uncorrectable multibit error) requiring a machine level interrupt, or the like. And, when no parity is found by the CPU and Derr.sub.-- is not active, then the data is known to be valid and the parity/ECC latency is eliminated, thereby saving processing cycle time.


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