Method and apparatus for providing fault detection to a bus within a computer system

摘要

A method and apparatus for providing fault detection to a corresponding bus when one or more of the users connected to the bus does not have a fault detection capability provided therein. Further, the present invention may provide a method and apparatus for performing fault detection on a corresponding bus when the width of the bus is insufficient to accommodate a number of parity bits. In an exemplary embodiment, a selected one of the number of users may validate all bus transmissions via a number of transceivers, regardless of which user has a fault detection capability provided therein. In another exemplary embodiment of the present invention, a transmitting user may provide a data word and a number of corresponding parity bits. The transmitting user may provide the data word to the bus while storing the corresponding number of parity bits therein. The data word may be provided back to the transmitting user via the corresponding transceivers wherein the transmitting user may check the data word against the number of parity bits previously generated by the transmitting user.