Patent ID: 6636927
Filing Date: 2003-10-21
Classification: G06F

Abstract:
A bridge device for transferring data between master and slave devices, said bridge device being coupled between a first bus and a second bus, said master devices being coupled to said first bus and said slave devices being coupled to said second bus, said bridge device comprising:a set of prefetch control registers for storing prefetch sizes of data to be prefetched for a set of said master devices, one prefetch control register per master device; a prefetch buffer for storing data; and bridge control circuitry coupled to said prefetch control registers and said prefetch buffer for transferring data between a source device and a destination device, said bridge control circuitry being arranged to receive a first data transfer request from a selected master device for transferring data between said selected master device and a selected slave device, said bridge control circuitry issuing a second data transfer request to said selected slave device for transferring said data, wherein said bridge control circuitry receives said requested data from said source device and stores said received data in said prefetch buffer, and wherein said bridge control circuitry transfers said stored data from said prefetch buffer to said destination device when said prefetch buffer receives and stores data size that correspond to said prefetch size stored in a prefetch control register associated with said selected master device.