Patent ID: 7000045

Claim:
A data transfer system comprising: a data bus operating in a fixed-byte data transfer format to transfer a plurality of words in successive plural transfers of a single transaction, each word containing a predetermined number of bytes; a master device and a slave device coupled to the data bus, one of the master and slave devices operating in the fixed-byte transfer format to transfer words and word portions on the data bus between the master and slave devices in either even-byte combinations or in even-byte and single-byte combinations, the other of the master and slave devices operating in a byte-enable data transfer format to transfer words on the data bus between the master and slave devices in byte combinations that includes odd-byte combinations; a size bus coupled between the master and slave devices to carry a size code that identifies a number of bytes being transferred in each transfer of the transaction; and an interface responsive to an odd-byte byte-enable code from the other of the master and slave devices to decode odd-byte byte-enable codes representing a plurality of bytes to a plurality of size codes associated to respective transfers of the transaction, wherein the interface permits transfer of the odd-byte byte-enable code from the byte-enable data transfer format in the fixed-byte data transfer format as successive plural transfers of the single transaction.