Patent ID: 7111105

Claim:
A parent-bridge comprising: a plurality of child-links for receiving a plurality of transactions from a plurality of child-bridges, the child-bridges having a plurality of child-level transaction order queues and a plurality of grandchild-links for receiving the plurality of transactions from a plurality of buses; a plurality of transaction identifier communication links for receiving a plurality of transaction identifiers for identifying the plurality of transactions, wherein each of the plurality of transactions is associated with a respective grandchild-link of a child-bridge; and a plurality of transaction order queue sets, the plurality of transaction order queue sets including a transaction order queue set for each respective child-link, each of the transaction order queue sets having a plurality of parent-level transaction order queues configured to receive a subset of the plurality of transactions, the subset including those transactions communicated over a particular child-link, wherein each of the plurality of transaction identifiers uniquely associates a transaction of the subset with only one of the plurality of parent-level transaction order queues and one of the grandchild-links, and wherein the parent-bridge is configured to route the transaction of the subset to the associated parent-level transaction order queue based on the transaction identifier associated with the transaction, such that the plurality of parent-level transaction order queues and the plurality of transaction identifiers facilitate maintenance of transaction ordering from the plurality of child-bridges to and within the parent-bridge.