Patent ID: 7073003
Filing Date: 2006-07-04
Classification: G06F,Y02D

Abstract:
1. A programmable fixed priority and round-robin arbiter comprising: a rotating unit which, when operating in both a fixed priority mode and in a round-robin mode, rotates priority information related to bus masters stored in a register in a direction of rotation to give the highest priority to a bus master in response to pointer information which indicates the bus master currently having the highest priority, the pointer information defining the amount of rotation to be initiated by the rotating unit so that reordered priority information is available in the register, and outputs the reordered priority information; a single, common request-reordering unit used for operation in both the fixed priority mode and in the round-robin mode, which, when a request signal is received from the bus masters, reorders requested priorities of the bus masters to be in accordance with the reordered priority information and outputs a request-reordering signal; a request-selecting unit which outputs a bus master-selecting signal according to priorities in response to the request-reordering signal; and a single, common grant-reordering unit used for operation in both the fixed priority mode and in the round-robin mode, which outputs a bus master grant signal to the bus masters according to priorities in response to the bus master-selecting signal.