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:
Aug. 11, 1998
Filed:
Jan. 31, 1996
Bruce W Mitchell, San Jose, CA (US);
James S Cho, San Clara, CA (US);
Greg Walter, San Francisco, CA (US);
John H Hughes, San Jose, CA (US);
Roger D Rothhaar, Milpitas, CA (US);
3Com Corporation, Santa Clara, CA (US);
Abstract
A bus protocol technique removes the transaction used for posting indications of events to the host processor from the bus. The invention takes advantage of the fact that addresses typically on a high speed bus contain fewer bits than the entire bus width. Particularly, for a 32 bit bus, the 32 bit address space is not always necessary. The remaining bits on the bus are used for an encoded event tag. A bus transaction involves a first bus transfer which provides an address for writing or reading data, along with the event tag. The event tag is detected and decoded by the destination, and the event is posted to the processor which monitors and responds to events, in a manner which is synchronous with completion of the transaction. Thus, after the transaction on the bus, the message subject of the transaction is waiting in the memory, and notification of the event has occurred automatically and synchronously with completion of the transfer.