Patent ID: 6874052

Claim:
A system comprising: at least one host bus master operable to utilize a first communications protocol for communicating over a parent bus; and at least two LIP bridge devices, each LIP bridge device including, a first transceiver coupled to said host bus master over said parent bus, said host bus master utilizing said first communications protocol; a second transceiver coupled to target devices over a child bus, said target devices utilizing a second communications protocol, said first communications protocol having a bridge device address field for addressing said bridge devices and a target device address field for addressing said target devices coupled to said child bus; said at least two LIP bridge devices being coupled to said parent bus and said child bus, said at least two LIP bridge devices being operable to transmit messages between said host bus master and said target devices, each of said at least two LIP bridge devices being partnered to the other LIP bridge device, said host bus master being operable to use said at least two LIP bridge devices to determine if transactions through a particular LIP bridge are corrupted, said host bus master being operable to cross check data provided by each of said at least two LIP bridge devices to verify integrity of data received from said target devices, and each of said at least two LIP bridge devices being adapted to use partnering signals to reset the other LIP bridge device to isolate faults.