Patent ID: 7417993

Claim:
An apparatus for high-throughput asynchronous communication, comprising: a sender; a receiver; a sender's first-in, first-out (FIFO) buffer coupled to an input of the sender; a receiver's FIFO buffer coupled to an input of the receiver; a forward communication channel coupled between the sender and the receiver's FIFO buffer; and a reverse communication channel coupled between the receiver and the sender's FIFO buffer; wherein the forward communication channel, the receiver's FIFO buffer, the reverse communication channel, and the sender's FIFO buffer operate collectively as a network FIFO between the sender and the receiver, wherein each time the sender removes a white token, which is an acknowledge token, from the sender's FIFO buffer, the sender inserts a black token, which is a request token, into the forward communication channel, and each time the receiver removes a black token from the receiver's FIFO buffer, the receiver inserts a white token into the reverse communication channel; and wherein the network FIFO is configured to ensure that asynchronous communication between the sender and the receiver takes place reliably and without unnecessary waiting by the sender or the receiver.