Methods and apparatus for implementing a host side advanced serial protocol

摘要

A host controller for enabling communication between a host computer and a device over a serial link is provided. The host controller includes a bus interface circuit that is connected to a system bus of the host computer. The host controller further includes host controller registers to enable code configuration of the host controller for operation, initialize the device, and send commands to the device. A packet generator/decoder circuit is also provided for generating poll packets to be sent to the device and for sending and receiving packets to or from the device. The host controller also has a serializer/deserializer for converting parallel data received from the bus interface circuit and to be sent over the serial link to the device into serial data and converting serial data received from the serial link to parallel data to be sent to the bus interface circuit and to the host computer.