Patent ID: 7685344

Claim:
A method of arbitrating a plurality of bus access requests from a plurality of devices connected to a bus, comprising the steps of: setting a required data size to be transferred individually by each of the plurality of the devices via the bus; setting a required transfer time period for transferring the data individually by each of the plurality of the devices via the bus; measuring a remaining time period until the required time period which is individually set by each of the plurality of the devices has elapsed; calculating a remaining data size to be transferred via the bus based on the required data size to be transferred by each of the plurality of the devices and on a transferred data size which has been transferred by each of the plurality of devices at each time when the data is transferred by each of the plurality of devices; setting the priority level of each of the plurality of the devices for transferring data via the bus based on a ratio between the remaining time period measured in the measuring step and the remaining data size calculated in the calculating step, with respect to the each of the plurality of devices; and arbitrating the plurality of bus access requests from the plurality of devices in accordance with the priority level of each of the plurality of devices for transferring data via the bus.