Patent ID: 7706387

Claim:
A method for round robin arbitration in a switch comprising a plurality of input ports and a plurality of output ports, the method comprising the steps of: receiving a plurality of requests from N input ports of the switch; determining N round robin arbitration option winners by the switch performing N round robin arbitration options on the plurality of requests before an actual previous round robin arbitration winner has been determined, each of the N round robin arbitration options performed without knowing the actual previous round robin arbitration winner and assuming that a different one of the N input ports was the actual previous round robin arbitration winner; identifying the input port of the N input ports that was the actual previous round robin arbitration winner; and selecting a current round robin arbitration winner from among the N round robin arbitration option winners by selecting the round robin arbitration option winner in which the assumed previous round robin arbitration winner is the actual previous round robin arbitration winner.