Patent ID: 7596652

Claim:
An apparatus comprising: an integrated circuit chip comprising an input/output (I/O) processor, a bridge, and circuitry to couple in parallel both the bridge and the processor to a first bus and to a second bus, the processor and the bridge being coupled to the first bus and to the second bus such that at least one of data exchange and command exchange occurs between the processor and a host processor that by-passes being propagated through the bridge, the first bus being compatible with a first bus protocol, the second bus being compatible with a second bus protocol, the bridge being to prevent, in response at least in part to a request from the processor, a command requesting configuration information received at the bridge via the first bus from the host processor from being forwarded from the bridge to the second bus, the processor comprised in the integrated circuit chip being to configure a device coupled to the second bus independently from the host processor, the first bus protocol and the second bus protocol being different from each other, the configuration information being to configure the device coupled to the second bus, the processor comprised in the integrated circuit chip also being to assign to the device a subset of a total set of resources allocated to the integrated circuit chip by the host processor, the subset being based, at least in part, upon an allocation request from the device to the processor comprised in the integrated circuit chip, the total set of resources being based, at least in part, upon another allocation request from the processor comprised in the integrated circuit chip to the host processor, the I/O processor comprising a general purpose processor, the I/O processor being to access and execute program instructions stored in memory, the memory being comprised in a motherboard and in a circuit board, the circuit board to be coupled to the motherboard, execution of the program instructions resulting in the I/O processor performing operations including: generating the request from the I/O processor to the bridge, assigning to the device the subset of the total set of resources allocated to the integrated circuit chip, and generating the another allocation request.