Ronald A Simmons

US Patent:

7039750, May 2, 2006

Filed:

Jul 24, 2001

Appl. No.:

09/912231

Inventors:

Jack Regula - San Jose CA, US
Jhy-Ping Shaw - San Jose CA, US
Ronald A. Simmons - Bountiful UT, US
Curtis Winward - Lehi UT, US
Ralph Woodard - Mountain View CA, US
William Wu - Cupertino CA, US

Assignee:

PLX Technology, Inc. - Sunnyvale CA

International Classification:

G06F 13/00

US Classification:

710317, 710242

Abstract:

A system for communication on a chip. The system includes an on-chip communication bus including plural tracks, and a plurality of stations that couple a plurality of on-chip components to the on-chip communication bus, whereby the plurality of on-chip components use the tracks to communicate. Each station preferably includes an initiator that requests permission to transmit outgoing data over a track to another station and that transmits the outgoing data, an arbiter that evaluates requests from other stations and selects a track on which to receive incoming data, and a target that receives the incoming data. The initiator can be connected to a grant multiplexor for selecting a grant line, with the grant multiplexor further including plural smaller multiplexors distributed across the chip. Likewise, the arbiter can be connected to a track multiplexor for selecting a track, with the track multiplexor further including plural smaller multiplexors distributed across the chip. Each station also can include a source queue for queuing outgoing data and a destination queue for queuing incoming data.