Abstract: A serial bus controller having improved bus performance when a physical read request or a physical write request is present. A link and physical layer logic unit is provided, coupled to a serial bus having at least one peripheral device coupled thereto. A host interface is provided, coupled to a host data bus. A request FIFO is provided, coupled to receive a host memory read or write request packet from the link and physical layer logic unit, and coupled to said host interface. A physical read request FIFO is provided, coupled to receive a physical read request from the request FIFO for further processing of the physical read request. A physical write request FIFO is provided, coupled to receive a physical write response for transfer to the peripheral device.

Abstract: A packet control list (456) controls the transfer of data packets between at least one source location (452) and at least one destination location (460) each associated with a data packet transfer device (20). Packet control list (456) associates a plurality of data packet transfer control instructions (454) in a sequential list (466) including a plurality of logical functions (472) for controlling logical operations relating to the transfer of data packets from at least one source location (452) to at least one destination location (460). Instructions (486) control the operation of data packet transfer device (20) according to instructions (486).

Abstract: In a PCI-interface device (20), assigning highest DMA channel (74) priority is based on the DMA channel number associated with the data transfer currently active on the physical media interface. The present invention supplies this priority information relating to the currently active data packet being transferred to the DMA arbitration logic (348) and continues to service the current DMA channel until a predetermined boundary condition exists. The method and system (300) shift DMA channel execution to this highest priority DMA channel upon determining the occurrence of the boundary condition.