System having independently addressable bus interfaces coupled to serially connected multi-ported signal distributors generating and maintaining frame based polling schedule favoring isochronous peripherals

Claim 1

A serial bus assembly for serially interfacing one or more isochronous and/or asynchronous peripherals to a system unit of a computer system, the serial bus assembly comprising: one or more independently addressable bus interfaces, one for each peripheral, for independently coupling the peripherals to the system unit, conducting bus management transactions including configuration management transactions with a bus master, and facilitating data transactions with independently addressable functions of their respective peripherals, each peripheral having one or more independently addressable functions, responsive to authorizations received from the bus master, each bus interface being a terminal point of the serial bus assembly; zero or more independently addressable bus signal distributors, each having a plurality of ports, for coupling said one or more bus interfaces upstream towards the bus master, and serving as conduits for bus signal distributions, wherein if the serial bus assembly has only a single bus interface, the single bus interface is coupled to the bus master, and if the serial bus assembly has more than one bus interface, each bus interface is coupled upstream to a bus signal distributor, and each bus signal distributor is in turn coupled upstream to another bus distributor, except for one bus signal distributor, which is coupled upstream to the bus master; an addressable bus controller coupled upstream to the system unit, and downstream to either a bus signal distributor or a bus interface depending on the number of bus interfaces included in the serial bus assembly, for functioning as the bus master, authorizing the zero or more bus signal distributors, the bus interface(s) and the function(s) of the peripheral(s) to conduct transactions, conducting management transactions including configuration management transactions with the zero or more bus signal distributors and the bus interface(s), and facilitating data transactions with the system unit, said bus controller dynamically generating and maintaining a frame based polling schedule for polling said functions of said peripherals for data communication transactions, said dynamically generated and maintained frame based polling schedule favoring isochronous peripherals over asynchronous peripherals.