Patent ID: 7818519
Filing Date: 2010-10-19
Classification: B41J,G06F,H03K,H04N,Y10S,Y10T

Abstract:
1. A method for arbitrating between a plurality of access requests issued in relation to a resource by a plurality of requestors in an integrated circuit, wherein each request can be one of a CPU write request from a CPU requester, a non-CPU write request from a non-CPU requester and a non-CPU read request from a non-CPU requester, the method including the steps of: (a) receiving, in a timeslot arbitrator of the integrated circuit, a plurality of the access requests; (b) maintaining, in the timeslot arbitrator, a current pointer that points to a current timeslot in a timeslot list, and at least one lookahead pointer that points to a future timeslot in the timeslot list; and (c) in the event an access request as arbitrated via the lookahead pointer is a non-CPU write request, initiating performance of the access request, in the timeslot arbitrator, earlier than the position in the list suggests it would be performed should it be started when the current pointer reached the current timeslot, wherein, in step (c), the earlier position is selected so as to not be adjacent a position in the list for performance of another non-CPU write request, and each timeslot in the timeslot list is configured with a CPU access preceding a non-CPU access so that a CPU write request is performed before either a non-CPU write request or non-CPU read request.