Patent ID: 7668996

Claim:
A method for maximizing use of a data bus grant, the method comprising: sending a first request for a first bus grant to deliver a first data to a data bus connecting a source device and a destination device; receiving the first bus grant to deliver said first data to the data bus in response to said first request; determining whether a bandwidth of said data bus allocated to the first bus grant will be filled by said first data, wherein said bandwidth is a number of clock cycles allocated to the first bus grant; in response to determining that the bandwidth of said data bus allocated to the first bus grant will not be filled by said first data: appending a second data to said first data to provide combined data; delivering the combined data to said data bus during said first bus grant; delivering only said first data to said data bus during said first bus grant when the bandwidth of said data bus allocated to the first bus grant will be filled by said first data; determining whether said delivering of the combined data to said data bus during said first bus grant will violate a latency constraint of said data bus; and in response to determining that said delivering of the combined data to said data bus during said first bus grant will violate a latency constraint of said data bus, delivering only said first data to said data bus during said first bus grant.