公开(公告)号：CA2099033A1

公开(公告)日：1994-03-18

申请号：CA2099033

申请日：1993-06-23

Applicant: IBM

Inventor： OLNOWICH HOWARD T ,  FISHER MICHAEL H ,  LUSCH ROBERT F ,  MANIGUET MICHAEL A ,  SAIYID OMAR A

IPC: G06F13/00 ,  G06F13/36 ,  G06F13/40 ,  G06F15/173 ,  H04L12/18 ,  H04L12/46 ,  H04L12/50 ,  H04Q11/04 ,  G06F13/38

Abstract: SWITCH-BASED PERSONAL COMPUTER INTERCONNECTION APPARATUS Disclosed is a modularly expandable switch-based apparatus which is used to interconnect multiple Personal Computers as nodes of a parallel system. The invention includes a bus-based expansion card which is inserted into a card slot in each of the Personal Computers to provide an adaptation from the Personal Computer MicroChannel to the interface to a multi-stage switch network. Thus, the disclosed invention provides a means for extending the MicroChannel architectures to either massively parallel systems or thousands of I/O device taps or a combination of the two. This is accomplished by using electronic switches to interconnect various Personal Computers, where each computer has a unique local bus that can be composed of 1 to 8 MicroChannel taps (card slots). An expansion card containing a bus architecture converter unit is used in one expansion card slot in each Personal Computer to adapt the node to the switch network. The result is that the Personal Computers are fully interconnected and capable of sending data, communications, and/or messages between any two Personal Computers, which become nodes of the parallel system.

公开(公告)号：CA2100235A1

公开(公告)日：1994-03-18

申请号：CA2100235

申请日：1993-07-09

Applicant: IBM

Inventor： OLNOWICH HOWARD T ,  FISHER MICHAEL H ,  LUSCH ROBERT F ,  MANIGUET MICHAEL A ,  SAIYID OMAR A

IPC: G06F13/14 ,  G06F11/26 ,  G06F13/40 ,  G06F15/173 ,  G06F15/80 ,  H04L1/00 ,  H04L7/033 ,  H04L12/18 ,  H04L12/56 ,  H04L29/06 ,  H04Q11/00 ,  H04Q11/04 ,  G06F15/16

Abstract: Disclosed is a modularly expandable switch-based planar apparatus for inserting multiple bus-based processor cards and/or expansion cards and interconnecting the said cards via a multi-stage switch network which resides on the invention planar. The switching network is built into the planar. The cards require no modification or change of any kind, since the connection to the planar is made as if the planar contained the standard MicroChannel interconnection. However, the disclosed planar implements bus converter units to convert the standard bus interface provided by the cards to the switch network interface, so that functions provided by the cards can communicate in parallel over the switch network.