Patent ID: 7624221

Claim:
A link interface unit for transmitting a stream of data transfer requests from a requesting device to a target device via a link, the link interface unit comprising: a request selection circuit configured with an active mode and a pass-through mode, wherein: in the active mode the request selection circuit applies an optimization rule to optimize at least a portion of the stream of data transfer requests and selects an optimized data transfer request for transmission onto the link; and in the pass-through mode the request selection circuit selects a data transfer request from the stream for transmission onto the link without applying the optimization rule; the request selection circuit being coupled to receive an enable signal that selects between the active mode and the pass-through mode; and an optimization control circuit coupled to the request selection circuit and configured to compute a performance metric based on information about one or more transmitted data transfer requests, the performance metric corresponding to a predicted behavior of the target device, the optimization control circuit including a decision circuit configured to assert or deassert the enable signal for the request selection circuit based at least in part on the performance metric.