Patent ID: 8270322

Claim:
A system for arbitrating a transmission of data comprising: a number K of transmitters, each transmitter including a number N of data transmission devices, a request signal transmission device for transmitting a request signal, a data valid signal transmission device, a wait signal reception device, and a data valid logic device coupled to the data valid signal transmission device for transmitting a data valid signal to a receiver, wherein a transmitter asserts its request signal to request permission to begin a data transmission and transmits transmission-identifying information; and the receiver including a data valid signal reception device, a wait signal transmission device, and an arbitration logic device coupled to receive the request signal and the transmission-identifying information from each of the request signal transmission devices of the K transmitters, a wait logic device coupled to transmit a wait signal to each of the wait signal reception devices of the K transmitters, and K data registers, each including N data reception devices, each of the N data reception devices of each of the K data registers being coupled to a corresponding one of the N data transmission devices of a corresponding one of the K transmitters; wherein the data valid logic device deasserts the data valid signal based on a state of the wait signal, thereby preventing a transmission of data from each of the K transmitters at one clock cycle after a clock cycle at which the data valid signal is deasserted; wherein the wait logic device instructs the wait signal transmission device to assert the wait signal to each wait signal reception device of the K transmitters, thereby preventing a transmission of data from each of the K transmitters at one clock cycle after a clock cycle at which the wait signal is asserted; and wherein, upon the arbitration logic device receiving asserted request signals and transmission-identifying information from more than one of the K transmitters, based on a predetermined arbitration scheme that uses the transmission-identifying information, the arbitration logic device selects one of the more than one transmitters to grant permission to transmit data to the receiver and outputs a first arbitration signal to the wait logic device instructing the wait logic device to deassert the wait signal of the selected transmitter, thereby enabling the N data transmission devices of the selected transmitter to transmit data to the associated N data reception devices at one clock cycle after a clock cycle at which the data valid logic transmits the data valid signal upon receiving the wait signal from the wait signal transmission device.