High performance multichannel DMA controller for a PCI host...

Details High performance multichannel DMA controller for a PCI host... High performance multichannel DMA controller for a PCI host...

1997-11-10

2001-05-08

Beausoleil, Robert (Department: 2181)

Electrical computers and digital data processing systems: input/

Input/output data processing

Direct memory accessing

C710S120000, C710S021000, C710S024000

Reexamination Certificate

active

06230219

ABSTRACT:

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to a data transfer device and, more particularly, to a peripheral component interconnect (PCI) host bridge device.
2. Description of the Related Art
In 1995, version 2.0 of the peripheral component interconnect (PCI) bus specification was replaced by version 2.1. This new version introduced new requirements intended to better control bus latency and performance. For example, the new version only allows a certain amount of cycles during which a PCI target device has to transfer data in response to a request from a master device. If the target device cannot respond within the allowable time (e.g., 16 cycles), then the target device must instruct the master device to resend the request at a later time. This 16-cycle constraint is intended to free the PCI bus for other transactions instead of holding the bus in a wait state until the data is fetched. These new requirements, however, engender new technical problems that are yet to be solved.
One solution to these technical problems is to re-design the PCI host bridge (PHB) to accommodate the new requirements. A PHB is a hardware that interconnects a system bus to a PCI bus to receive/transmit input/output (I/O) data. The PHB accepts I/O commands from the system bus and controls the execution of these commands on the PCI bus. Conversely, the PHB accepts direct memory access (DMA) commands from the PCI bus and controls the execution of the DMA commands on the system bus. The PHB has an internal arbiter for controlling the PCI bus along interrupt support logic. The PHB contains data buffering for processor to I/O commands (i.e., loads, stores) along with data buffering and an internal data cache for DMA accesses to system memory.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
A host bridge having a dataflow controller is provided. In a preferred embodiment, the host bridge contains a read command path which has a mechanism for requesting and receiving data from an upstream device. The host bridge also contains a write command path that has means for receiving data from a downstream device and for transmitting the received data to an upstream device. A target controller is used to receive the read and write commands from the downstream device and to steer the read command toward the read command path and the write command toward the write command path. A bus controller is also used to request control of an upstream bus before transmitting the request for data of the read command and transmitting the data of the write command.


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