A power failure safe architecture

摘要

A component powered by a first power supply activates a driving signal. The driving signal indicates that both a second power supply voltage has a magnitude greater than a reference voltage and an enable signal is active. A driver transfers the output signal when the driving signal is active. In a multi-processor computer system implementation, each of two processor cores are independently supplied power by each of two core power supplies while a single I/O power supply supplies power to the I/O rings of both processors. Each processor includes a bus isolation circuit to prevent its respective processor from loading the system bus in the event that a core power supply fails.