Patent ID: 7062582

Claim:
An arbitration circuit for granting access to a shared resource among requestors, comprising: a plurality of request shapers each comprising an input unit to receive a request from one of a plurality of the requesters, a priority unit to assign a respective predetermined one of a plurality of priority levels to each of the requests, and an age unit to assign an age to each of the requests when the request is received by the request shaper; and an arbiter core to receive the requests from the request shapers, and to grant access to the shared resource to each of the requestors corresponding to the requests; wherein the arbiter core comprises: a mask circuit, wherein the mask circuit comprises: a plurality of mask registers each corresponding to a respective one of the priority levels: wherein each of the age units increases the age of a respective one of the requests when the corresponding one of the requestors is not granted access to the shared resource; and wherein each of the priority units increases the priority level of a respective one of the requests, when the corresponding one of the requestors is not granted access to the shared resource, according to the age of the respective one of the requests.