Patent ID: 8688887

Claim:
Computer peripheral expansion apparatus comprising one or more blade peripheral expansion units (â€˜BPEUsâ€™), each BPEU comprising: a peripheral interconnect multiplexer coupled for peripheral interconnect data communications through an upstream peripheral interconnect bus (â€˜PIBâ€™) segment to a host blade, the upstream PIB segment fanned out by the multiplexer into two or more peripheral downstream interconnect channels, the multiplexer connecting the upstream PIB segment to only one of the downstream channels at a time; and the two or more downstream peripheral interconnect channels, at least one of the downstream channels connected to at least one peripheral interconnect device (â€˜PIDâ€™) in the BPEU, the peripheral interconnect device comprising a device that communicates with the host blade according to a peripheral interconnect data communications protocol, one of the downstream channels configured to connect to an upstream PIB segment in another BPEU.