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:
Nov. 27, 2001
Filed:
May. 19, 1999
Jonathan E. Starr, Cupertino, CA (US);
Sun Microsystems, Inc., Palo Alto, CA (US);
Abstract
An information handling system includes a plurality of transmission lines coupled together at one end and having a characteristic impedance, a driver circuit coupled to one of the transmission lines, a plurality of receiver circuits individually coupled to distinct ones of the transmission lines for resolving the signals, and on-chip terminators having a output impedance corresponding to the characteristic impedance and that can be coupled or decoupled from a node by on-chip circuitry. In this embodiment, the terminators are separate and distinct from driver circuitry. However, when a node is in a receive configuration, its corresponding termination resistor is tied to the transmission line at that node, and its corresponding driver circuit presents a high impedance output to the node. A second embodiment provides driver circuits having particular on-chip pull-up and pull-down resistances, one of the either the pull-up or pull-down resistances being used to terminate the bus for those nodes which are in a receive configuration. In this second embodiment, separate terminators are not required, due to the driver operating as the terminator.