Patent ID: 7447817

Claim:
An arbitration module for arbitrating between a plurality of arbitration requests, comprising: a plurality of first stage arbiters that receive the plurality of arbitration requests and a signal that indicates a previously granted arbitration request, wherein each of the first stage arbiters, without granting any of the arbitration requests, asserts a high priority request signal if a high priority request is pending at said first stage arbiter and asserts a low priority request signal, if a low priority request is pending at said first stage arbiter; a second stage arbiter that receives the high priority request signals and arbitrates between high priority requests, when high priority requests are pending at one or more of said first stage arbiters, wherein if a high priority request is not pending at any of said first stage arbiters, then a low priority request is granted by a low priority request handler; and a data handler module that operates in parallel with the second stage arbiter to immediately move data associated with granted requests at any given time.