Method and apparatus for conducting bus transactions between two clock independent bus agents of a computer system using a transaction by transaction deterministic request/response protocol

摘要

An apparatus and method for communicating characteristics about a memory module to a processor unit. A method and apparatus for communicating memory module characteristics, such as whether the module can communicate in a deterministic mode, memory size, memory speed, memory type and whether the memory is cachable to a processor. In the present invention, the processor asserts a request signal onto the system bus and the memory module corresponding to the address of the request respond with information regarding its characteristics.