Patent ID: 7886106

Claim:
A sharing switch device for coupling to a peripheral device and a plurality of computers, comprising: a plurality of computer-side switches each for coupling to a corresponding computer; a hub device having an upstream end coupled to the plurality of computer-side switches, a first downstream end for coupling to the peripheral device, and a second downstream end; a plurality of device controllers each coupled to a corresponding computer-side switch, wherein each computer-side switch switches the corresponding computer to either the corresponding device controller or the upstream end of the hub device; a controller-side switch coupled to the plurality of device controllers and to the second downstream end of the hub device for switching the second downstream end of the hub device to one of the device controllers; wherein one of the device controllers is a master device controller and the other device controllers are slave device controllers controlled by the master device controller; wherein the slave device controllers transfer switching requests and data transfer finished commands received from their corresponding computers to the master device controller, wherein the master device controller maintains a queue of switching requests received from its corresponding computer and from the slave device controllers, and wherein when the master device controller receives a data transfer finished command from its corresponding computer or from one of the slave device controllers, it retrieves a next switching request from the queue and initiates switching of the computer-side switches and the controller-side switch to connect a next computer to the peripheral device.