Controlling the flow of information between senders and receivers across
links being used as channels. In one example, a self-timed interface link
is adapted to be used as a channel. Such an interface is referred to as an
integrated cluster bus. The flow control for the integrated cluster bus
includes, for instance, a Data Request packet that indicates to the
transmitter of data that it can now send the data; a continue indicator
that specifies that more data is to follow; and a sequence indicator that
is used to determine if a particular message is in proper sequence order.
The integrated cluster bus does not require large data buffers and offers
low latency messaging.
