Patent ID: 7382794

Claim:
A parallel round-robin arbiter (PRAA) for arbitrating among a plurality of requesters, comprising: a first plurality of leaf nodes coupled together in a directed ring, wherein at least one of the leaf nodes propagates a request from a corresponding one of the plurality of requesters, wherein said directed ring forms a leaf level in a hierarchical decision tree having [(log Base N)+1] levels, where N=[Base] n for [[some]] n>1; a second plurality of nodes organized in a subtree having [log Base N] levels of said hierarchical decision tree, wherein a root level includes a root node and a sub-plurality of intermediate levels each including [Base] i internal nodes, where i=1, 2, . . . , [(log Base N)−1]; and logic associated with said subtree's nodes that hierarchically resolves requests propagated by said leaf nodes, wherein each of the leaf nodes transmits its grant to one of die leaf node's immediate neighbors coupled to it via said directed ring.