Patent ID: 6996684

Claim:
A multiple-grant controller for parallelly arbitrating system resources, the multiple-grant controller comprising: a volatile memory; a plurality of application circuits wherein when accessing the volatile memory, each of the application circuits is capable of sending a request signal with a unique priority corresponding to each application circuit so that each of the application circuits has a unique priority; and a parallel arbiter wherein when a first plurality of the application circuits assert request signals in a period of time, the arbiter will select a number of the application circuits with highest priority according to the first plurality of application circuits such that the selected application circuits are allowed to access the volatile memory and the number of the application circuits does not exceed a predetermined number, the arbiter comprising: a plurality of arbiter modules for receiving the request signals wherein each of the arbiter modules is assigned to receive part of the request signals and to parallelly output an arbiter result, wherein each of the arbiter modules comprises a plurality of arbiter units, wherein each of the arbiter units has a unit priority, and the arbiter units arbitrate to select a request sinal asserted by a related application circuit with highest priority according to part of the request signals received by each of the arbiters; and a main arbiter module electrically connected to the arbiter modules for receiving the arbiter results, wherein the main arbiter module grants the number of the application circuits with the higher priority access to the volatile memory according to the arbiter results.