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:
Dec. 30, 2003
Filed:
Jul. 11, 2001
Terry Lynn Cole, Austin, TX (US);
Dale E. Gulick, Austin, TX (US);
Timothy C. Maleck, Austin, TX (US);
Frank Barth, Radebeul, DE;
Joerg Winkler, Ullersdorf, DE;
Advanced Micro Devices, Inc., Sunnyvale, CA (US);
Abstract
A method and apparatus for passing device configuration information to a shared controller. In one embodiment, a host controller may be configured to read configuration from one or more peripheral devices coupled to a serial bus. The peripheral devices may include coder/decoder (codec) circuitry, and may be implemented using a riser card. The host controller may employ one or more of several different techniques in order to read configuration information from the peripheral device. The configuration information at a minimum includes a device identifier, which may identify the vendor and the function of the device. Additional information needed to configure the device to communicate over the peripheral bus may also be obtained with a read of the device, or various lookup mechanisms, such as a lookup table or a tree-like data structure. After configuration information has been obtained for each device coupled to the bus, the host controller may dynamically configure each of the devices for communication over the bus, thereby allowing the flexibility to enumerate riser cards and add new functions through peripheral devices to the computer system in which the bus is implemented.