Patent ID: 7073008

Claim:
A bridge for a Host-Bridge-Device system, the bridge comprising: a device bus interface for coupling a device to the bridge utilizing a first communications protocol; a plurality of host bus interfaces for coupling the bridge to a host system utilizing a plurality of communications protocols; a plurality of bridge chips, each bridge chip coupled to the device bus interface and to a respective host bus interface of the plurality of host bus interfaces, and for communicating between the first communications protocol of the device bus interface and a communications protocol of the respective host bus interface being coupled to the bridge chip; and a plurality of activation circuits, each activation circuit corresponding to a bridge chip and being for disabling the corresponding bridge chip until a predetenniried protocol initialization signal sent by the host system is received by the activation circuit, and further for enabling the corresponding bridge chip to control the device bus interface upon reception of the predetermined protocol initialization signal sent by the host system when all the bridge chips are disabled.