GATEWAY FOR THE AUTOMATIC ROUTING OF MESSAGES BETWEEN BUSES

摘要

The invention discloses a gateway (1) for the automatic routing of messages between buses (3), said gateway being connected to several communication components (2) for temporarily storing and transmitting messages (N) via said buses and a gateway control unit, which is connected to the communication components (2) via a system bus in order to exchange messages (N) and which receives notification in the form of an external event (EV_ext) from each communication component (2) of the occurrence of a message (N) to be routed in said component. The gateway control unit has a vector memory (VRAM) comprising a first memory area for storing communication component vectors (KBV), a communication component vector (KBV) being provided for each message group of a communication component (2) and said vector indicating the time point (ZP) of the next expected internal event (EV_int) for a message (N) that is stored in the communication component (2) and a vector jump address to a message vector (NV), which is stored in a second memory area of the vector memory (VRAM). A corresponding message vector (NV) is stored for each message (N) that has been temporarily stored in the communication component (KB), said vector indicating a configurable time point (ZP) of an internal event (EV_int) that is triggered by the associated message (N), in addition to a command jump address. The gateway control unit also contains a command memory (IRAM) for storing commands that can be addressed by the command jump address indicated in the message vector (NV) and a control structure (FSM), which reads the communication component vector (KBV) associated with the respective communication component (2) from the first memory area of the vector memory (VRAM), if an internal event (EV_int) occurs, whose time point (ZP) is indicated in a message vector (NV) of a message (N) that is temporarily stored in a communication component (KB), or if said control structure (FSM) is notified of the occurrence of an external event (EV_ext) by a communication component (2). The control structure uses the vector jump address contained in the communication component vector to read the command jump address of the addressed message vector (NV) from the second memory area of the vector memory (VRAM) and then reads and executes at least one command from the command memory (IRAM) using the read command jump address. The time points (ZP) indicated in the vectors (NV, KBV) are then updated.