Patent ID: 7617343

Claim:
A processing system comprising: a bus having transmit and receive channels, the transmit channel having a plurality of sub-channels; a sending component adapted to broadcast on each of the sub-channels information comprising read and write address locations, read and write control signals, and write data; and a receiving component adapted to store the write data broadcast and retrieve read data in response to the information broadcast on any of the sub-channels, and further adapted to send the retrieved read data on the receive channel to the sending component; wherein, in a first signaling mode, the sending component is further adapted to provide to the receiving component independent signaling for each of the sub-channels, the independent signaling comprising a different set of signals corresponding to each of the sub-channels, the independent signaling being sufficient to allow the sending component to transmit and the receiving component to acknowledge transactions on a sub-channel independent of activity on other sub-channels and in a second signaling mode, the sending component is further adapted to provide to the receiving component common signaling corresponding to each of the sub-channels, and wherein the receiving component is adapted to acknowledge a transaction only when all of the sub-channels are able to service the transaction.