Patent ID: 7739436
Filing Date: 2010-06-15
Classification: G06F

Abstract:
1. An apparatus, comprising: an arbitration unit for a shared bi-directional communication bus that implements a round robin policy where each requesting device, of a plurality of requesting devices, has an equal chance of accessing the shared bi-directional communication bus based upon a current request priority assigned to that requesting device, wherein the arbitration unit includes at least a state block that includes a plurality of state registers, each of the state registers is to store information that indicates which requesting device of a respective pair of the plurality of requesting devices will win if both devices of the respective pair are requesting access to the shared resource; an update logic block configured to track a current request priority of each of the respective pairs of requesting devices relative to the other pairs that could request access to the shared bi-directional communication bus, and wherein the update logic block and the state block act to pre-compute an ordered list in which the requesting devices from the plurality of requesting devices are prioritized to win the arbitration process if a given requesting device was to present a request to the arbitration unit on an initial arbitration cycle; and