A study on technologies that enable high-speed communication regardless of the interface standard between the host devices and peripheral devices

Abstract

Recently, I/O interfaces for connecting a computer to peripheral devices have emerged to provide 10Giga services for communication companies. Therefore, Intel has developed Thunderbolt cables, which enable electrical signals and high-speed data transfer to facilitate 10Giga services. Thunderbolt is a type of input–output interface that is used to connect computers and peripherals. It is capable of high-speed input/output(I/O), incurs lower overheads than USB, and supports data, images, and voice simultaneously. As these are very recent standards, they have not been applied to many computers. Moreover, no device exists to use interfaces having a different protocols while differentiating between Thunderbolt and USB devices. Therefore, if both interfaces are mutually incompatible, the user must utilize Thunderbolt or USB devices separately. For this reason, a device that automatically identifies Thunderbolt or USB and automatically adapts to the user’s environment is required. In this study, Thunderbolt MAC and a MAC are alternately connected to each other via an electrical Multiplexer to auto detect link information and connect to Host. Then, based on the determined result, the Thunderbolt to PCIe bridge or the USB to PCIe bridge is electrically connected to the PCIe BUS to which the Multiplexer is connected.