DATA TRANSFERRING IN SOURCE-SYNCHRONOUS AND COMMON CLOCK PROTOCOLS

摘要

A method and apparatus for transferring data between bus agents (102-105) in a computer system (100). The present invention includes transmitting a control signal (428, 426), from a first agent (102-105) to a second agent (102-105), via a first transfer protocol; and transmitting data (308) corresponding to the control signal (428, 426), from the first agent (102-105) to the second agent (102-105), via a second transfer protocol. In one embodiment, the control signals (428, 426) are transmitted from the first agent (102-105) to the second agent (102-105) via a synchronous transmission with respect to a bus clock (600); and, the data is transmitted via an asynchronous transmission with respect to the bus clock (600). The synchronous transmission is a common clock data transfer protocol, and the asynchronous transmission is a source clock data transfer protocol.