Patent ID: 9384158
Filing Date: 2016-07-05
CPC Classification: G06F

Claim Text:
1. A computer system, comprising: a host computer comprising one or more universal ports for connecting external devices to the host computer, one or more operating systems, and one or more firmware device managers; a plurality of external device adapters, each supporting a respective peripheral device and configured to operate in at least one mode; a universal device switch operative for selectively connecting the external device adapters to the universal port; a host bridge associated with the host computer comprising a request router configured to receive requests from the external device adapters via the universal device switch, read header data included with each request, and route each request to one of the operating systems or one or more of the firmware device managers or an operating system under control of the firmware device manager based on the header data of the request, wherein requests from an external device adapter in a first mode are directed to one of the firmware device managers, wherein requests from an external device adapter in a second mode are directed to one of the firmware operating systems, and wherein one or more of the external device adapters is a mixed mode adapter configured to selectively operate in more than one of the modes; a device table that includes a device entry corresponding to each external device adapter with routing instructions, wherein the request router is configured to identify and associate each request with an associated device entry based in part on the mode of the requesting adapter, wherein a first subset of the header data is used to identify the mode of the requesting external device adapter, a second subset of the header data is used to identify the device entry for a requesting external device adapter having the first mode, and a third subset of the header data is used to identify the device entry for a requesting external device adapter having the second mode, the third subset different than the second subset; and a mixed mode table that includes a mixed mode entry corresponding to each mixed mode external device adapter that the request router utilizes to determine a mode of the mixed mode external device adapter with respect to each request received from a mixed mode adapter.