Patent ID: 8452907

Claim:
A data processing apparatus comprising: a shared resource; a plurality of requester elements sharing access to the shared resource; arbitration circuitry, responsive to requests asserted by one or more of said requester elements for access to the shared resource, configured to perform a priority determination operation to select only one of said asserted requests as a winning request, each of the asserted requests having a priority level associated therewith; relative priority ordering circuitry for attributing relative priorities to the plurality of requester elements, said arbitration circuitry comprises: candidate winner evaluating circuitry, during said priority determination operation, configured to identify every requester element whose asserted request has a priority level not exceeded by any other asserted request; and winner selection circuitry, during said priority determination operation, configured to determine the requester element that has the highest relative priority amongst the requester elements identified by the candidate winner evaluating circuitry, and to select as said winning request the request asserted by said determined requester element.