Two more Rambus Inc. patents

United States Patent 7,159,136
Best, et al. January 2, 2007

Drift tracking feedback for communication channels

Abstract
A communication channel includes a first component having a transmitter coupled to a normal signal source, and a second component having a receiver coupled to a normal signal destination. A communication link couples the first and second components. Calibration logic provides for setting an operation value for a parameter of the communication channel, such as by executing an exhaustive calibration sequence at initialization of the link. A tracking circuit, including a monitoring function, tracks drift in the parameter by monitoring a feedback signal that has a characteristic that correlates with drift in the communication channel, and updates, or indicates the need for updating of, the operation value of the parameter in response to the monitoring function.
Inventors: Best; Scott C. (Palo Alto, CA), Abhyankar; Abhijit M. (Sunnyvale, CA), Chang; Kun-Yung (Los Altos, CA), Lambrecht; Frank (Mountain View, CA)
Assignee: Rambus, Inc. (Los Altos, CA)
Appl. No.: 11/243,032
Filed: October 4, 2005

***

United States Patent 7,158,536
Ching, et al. January 2, 2007

Adaptive-allocation of I/O bandwidth using a configurable interconnect topology

Abstract
Apparatus and methods allocate I/O bandwidth of an electrical component, such as an IC, by configuring an I/O interface into various types of interfaces. In an embodiment of the present invention, an I/O interface is configured into either a bi-directional contact, unidirectional contact (including either a dedicated transmit or dedicated receive contact) or a maintenance contact used in a maintenance or calibration mode of operation. The I/O interface is periodically reconfigured to optimally allocate I/O bandwidth responsive to system parameters, such as changing data workloads in the electronic components. System parameters include, but are not limited to, 1) number of transmit-receive bus turnarounds; 2) number of transmit and/or receive data packets; 3) user selectable setting 4) number of transmit and/or receive commands; 5) direct requests from one or more electronic components; 6) number of queued transactions in one or more electronic components; 7) transmit burst-length setting, 8) duration or cycle count of bus commands, and control strobes such as address/data strobe, write enable, chip select, data valid, data ready; 9) power and/or temperature of one or more electrical components; 10) information from executable instructions, such as a software application or operating system; 11) multiple statistics over respective periods of time to determine if using a different bandwidth allocation would result in better performance. The importance of a system parameter may be weighted over time in an embodiment of the present invention.
Inventors: Ching; Michael (Los Altos, CA), Woo; Steven (Saratoga, CA)
Assignee: Rambus Inc. (Los Altos, CA)
Appl. No.: 10/766,334
Filed: January 28, 2004

HT FinzToRite.