Patent ID: 7689781

Claim:
A method of managing access to a collective resource, the method comprising: collecting, by an arbitrator, a plurality of access requests for accessing the collective resource; and performing, by a fixed-priority selector and a process selector included in the arbitrator, an arbitration function using a fixed-priority order to determine which access request to grant access to the collective resource, the step of performing the arbitration function comprising: selecting, by the process selector, a single access request from the plurality of access requests, the process selector using a first selection process to select the single access request when the plurality of access requests consists only of access requests possessing a lowest priority level, the lowest priority level comprising latency-insensitive, noncritical processes in write mode, forwarding, by the process selector, the selected single access request to the fixed-priority selector, and granting, by the fixed-priority selector, access to the collective resource for a single access request from the plurality of access requests, the fixed-priority selector using a second selection process to select the single access request possessing a highest priority level using the fixed-priority order.