MXIbus Multisystem Extension Interface Bus Specification
Edition Date:
April 1997
Part Number:
340007B-01
The Multisystem eXtension Interface bus (MXIbus) is a multidrop
parallel bus architecture designed for high-speed communication between
devices. The MXIbus is a general-purpose gateway that you can use to
communicate between two or more devices, such as personal computers,
workstation computers, VXIbus mainframes, VMEbus-based computers,
stand-alone instruments, or modular instruments.
The MXIbus links together multiple devices by mapping together
sections of their address spaces. This address map connection makes
remote MXIbus devices appear as if they are local memory resources of
other MXIbus devices. For example, an IBM PC AT computer with an
AT bus-to-MXIbus interface can control multiple VXIbus mainframes
equipped with MXIbus-to-VXIbus interfaces. The VXIbus mainframes
with their plug-in instrument modules then appear to the PC AT as if they
were plugged directly into the backplane of the PC AT. When the PC AT
performs a read or write to a memory location that maps to one of the
remote instrument modules, the AT-MXI interface translates the PC AT
bus cycle into a MXIbus bus cycle to the remote VXI-MXI interface,
which further translates the MXIbus cycle into a VXIbus cycle to reach
the particular memory location in the VXIbus mainframe.
The MXIbus architecture is a very high-performance link between
devices because it maps actual bus cycles on one device to bus cycles on
another device. Because it is a multidrop, multimaster architecture with a
full 32-bit multiplexed address and data pathway, multiple 8-, 16-, or
32-bit MXIbus devices can dynamically communicate with each other
and control each other’s resources at very high speeds. Accessing remote
devices is straightforward because all MXIbus device memory is written
and/or read through memory mapping.
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