A serial bus signal conditioner circuit includes receiver circuitry, a mode identification circuit, and an edge-rate booster circuit. The receiver circuitry is configured to receive signals transmitted on a serial bus. The mode identification circuit is coupled to the receiver circuitry, and is configured to identify initiation of or return to high-speed signaling on the serial bus based on sequences of the signals transmitted on the serial bus. The edge-rate booster circuit is coupled to the mode identification circuit, and is configured to identify edges of a differential signal transmitted on the serial bus, and to supply a differential current to the serial bus based on identification of an edge of the differential signal.

Examples disclosed herein include a method including transmitting, via respective lanes of a number of lanes of a peripheral component interconnect express (PCIe) port, a respective lane identifier. The method may also include receiving, via the respective lanes of the number of lanes of the PCIe port, respective further lane identifiers. The method may also include determining which of the number of lanes to allocate to a link for communicating with a device coupled to the PCIe port at least partially responsive to the respective further lane identifiers. The method may also include allocating the determined lanes of the number of lanes to the link. Related devices and systems are also disclosed.

Various data bus monitoring, analysis, and logging systems, devices, and methods are described herein. In one example, an apparatus includes a first circuit configured to monitor first packets among traffic carried by one or more first directional lanes of a communication link established between a host and one or more endpoint devices and determine header information for the first packets. The apparatus includes a second circuit configured to detect second packets among traffic carried by one or more second directional lanes of the communication link based at least in part on the header information determined for the first packets. The apparatus includes an analysis element configured to establish transaction metadata comprising properties of transactions on the communication link based at least on correlations among the first packets and the second packets.

An interface comprises routing circuitry configured to receive data items from a data source device and to route the received data items to a data sink device by either a first data path including a data buffer or a second data path, in response to an indication of a current state of a data sink device; the routing circuitry being configured to route the received data item by the first data path and to initiate a transition of the data sink device to a ready state in response to an indication that the data sink device is in a quiescent mode and currently not ready to receive the data item, the routing circuitry being configured to hold the data item at the buffer and to inhibit the data source device from sending further data items until the routing circuitry receives a subsequent indication that the data sink device is ready to receive the data item; and the routing circuitry being configured to route the received data item by the second data path in response to an indication that the data sink device is currently ready to receive the data item.

A motherboard module having switchable PCI-E lanes includes a CPU, a first PCI-E slot, a second PCI-E slot, a first switch, and a second switch. 1st to a-th processor pin sets of the CPU are switchably electrically connected to 1st to a-th first PCI-E pin sets of the first PCI-E slot or (2N−a+1)th to 2N-th second PCI-E pin sets of the second PCI-E slot via the first switch to form PCI-E lanes whose number is a. (a+1)-th to 2N-th processor pin sets of the CPU are connected to the second input terminal of the second switch, and the second output terminal of the second switch is switchably electrically connected to (a+1)-th to 2N-th first PCI-E pin sets of the first PCI-E slot or 1st to (2N−a)th second PCI-E pin sets of the second PCI-E slot to form PCI-E lanes whose number is 2N−a, wherein 1<a<2N.

In some embodiments, a system is provided for communicating USB information via an extension medium. The system comprises an upstream facing port device (UFP device) and a downstream facing port device (DFP device). The UFP device and the DFP device are communicatively coupled via a non-USB extension medium, and allow a host device communicatively coupled to the UFP device and a USB device communicatively coupled to the DFP device to communicate via USB-compliant techniques. In some embodiments, the DFP device generates synthetic request packets to request additional data packets from the USB device compared to those requested by the host device. In some embodiments, the DFP device is configured to store a request packet in a packet queue if the request packet is received from the UFP device while the DFP device is busy receiving a response to a previous synthetic request packet from the USB device.

Systems and methods for application specific integrated circuit design using Chronos links are disclosed. A Chronos Link is an ASIC on-chip and off-chip interconnect communication protocol that allows interfaces to transmit and receive information. The protocol may utilize messages or signals to indicate the availability and/or readiness of information to be exchanged between a producer and a consumer allowing the communication to be placed on hold and to be resumed seamlessly. A method includes inserting gaskets and channel repeaters connected to interfaces of multiple intellectual property (IP) blocks in order to replace traditional links with Chronos Links; performing simplified floorplanning; performing simplified placement; performing simplified clock tree synthesis (CTS) and routing; and performing simplified timing closure.

An information processing apparatus is capable of communicating via a universal serial bus (USB) cable with a USB host device configured to transmit a first control transfer command at a start of communication. The information processing apparatus includes one or more controllers configured to function as a unit configured to acquire and hold predetermined data in response to having received the first control transfer command from the USB host device and a unit configured to transmit the held predetermined data to the USB host device on the basis of having received a second control transfer command from the USB host device.

According to one embodiment, a device control apparatus includes a communication interface connectable to several client terminals via a network and a local device interface connectable to several peripheral devices. The device control apparatus functions as registration unit configured to receive an occupation request for a peripheral device from a client terminal and then register the peripheral device for which the occupation request has been received as occupied by the client terminal if the peripheral device is not registered as occupied by another client terminal. A setting unit sets a release time for releasing the occupation of the registered peripheral device, and an update unit updates the release time whenever communication occurs between the registered peripheral device and the client terminal. A release unit releases the registered occupation of the peripheral device once the release time elapses.

A system and method for efficiently transferring data between devices. In various embodiments, a host computing device receives parallel data, encodes the parallel data as a count of pulses as serial data, and conveys the serial data to a peripheral device. The peripheral device decodes the received serial data to determine the parallel data, which is sent to processing logic. The devices send the encoded pluses on a bidirectional line, so the pulses are capable of being sent in both directions. The devices send the encoded pulses on the bidirectional line using a non-zero base voltage level. The devices are capable of using a voltage headroom when conveying encoded pulses between one another. Therefore, a full voltage swing between a ground reference voltage level and a power supply voltage level is not used when conveying the encoded pulses, which reduces power consumption.