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:
Apr. 10, 2018

Filed:

Mar. 02, 2017
Applicant:

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

Inventors:

Harald Freudenberger, Fellbach, DE;

Thomas Hess, Bad Liebenzell, DE;

Martin Raitza, Boeblingen, DE;

Philip S. Schulz, Stuttgart, DE;

Markus Strasser, Metzingen, DE;

Assignee:
Attorney:
Primary Examiner:
Int. Cl.
CPC ...
G06F 13/40 (2006.01); G06F 13/364 (2006.01); G06F 13/42 (2006.01);
U.S. Cl.
CPC ...
G06F 13/4022 (2013.01); G06F 13/364 (2013.01); G06F 13/404 (2013.01); G06F 13/4282 (2013.01);
Abstract

A serial bus is provided with a device (sometimes herein referred to as an I2C serializer device) including circuitry and machine logic that operates as follows: when one of the master devices is using the bus for data communication, then the other master(s) will receive a wait signal until the bus becomes available again. This wait signal allows the master devices to wait as a 'hardware response,' rather than requiring the master devices to be equipped with software and/or firmware to control the operation of waiting until the serial bus is available. In some embodiments, the use of the I2C serializer device allows a bus operating under a bus serialization protocol (for example, I2C) to be simultaneously connected to multiple master devices even in the case that one, or more, master device(s) do not include any currently conventional form of multi-master support.


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