Application of bus emulation techniques to the design of a PCI/MC68000 bridge

Abstract

Bridges easy the interconnection and communication of devices that operate using different buses. In fact, we can see a computer as a hierarchy of buses to which devices are connected. In this paper we design a PCI/MC68000 bridge in order to improve communications between a Personal Computer and a MC68000 based system. The previous interface between both devices was based on the old 16-bit ISA bus, which represented a bottleneck in their communication. However, the methodology described here is generic and can be applied to the design of PCI bridges to other buses. We finish this work with an analysis of the bridge performance improvement which can also be easily adapted to other situations. As an example our interface is used in an interesting situation, i.e., updating the obsolete control unit of a highly valuable system (an industrial robot).