A MODULAR SYSTEM UTILIZING INTERCHANGEABLE PROCESSOR CARDS

摘要

The present invention provides a flexible upgradeable computer system by employing more than one interchangeable printed circuit boards (PCB) processor card of the present invention that is adaptable to more than one host PCB cards. The processor card includes a processor, its associated processor card system bus, a clock generator, and its associated processor card system clock bus. The host card includes devices other than the processor and clock generator, a host card system bus for coupling signals to and from the host card devices and a host card system clock bus for coupling clock signals to the host card devices. A system of the present invention is formed by coupling the system buses and system clock buses. In a modular computer system having more than one processor cards and more than one host cards, the clock generator provides at least one adaptable clock signal to the processor and provides a given clock signal having an associated rate on the processor card system clock bus. Host cards are designed to be adaptable to a range of clock signal rates. Thus, more than one host cards is adaptable to more than one processor cards.