Patent ID: 7636361

Claim:
An apparatus that asynchronously controls sending data items from a sender to a receiver in a communication system, comprising: a set of sending FIFOs; a set of receiving FIFOs; a shared data path between the sender and the receiver; a set of control paths that operate in parallel between the sender and the receiver, wherein each of the control paths comprises a separate request-acknowledge mechanism for communicating request-acknowledge signals, and wherein a given control path controls the transmission of data items between a corresponding sending FIFO and a corresponding receiving FIFO through the shared data path; and a round-robin scheduling mechanism configured to activate one control path at a time in a predetermined sequence, wherein an activated control path asynchronously controls the sending of a data item from a corresponding sending FIFO to a corresponding receiving FIFO, and wherein the round-robin scheduling mechanism activates consecutive control paths at an activation interval, wherein the activation interval multiplied by the number of the set of control paths is greater than or equal to the request-acknowledge cycle time; wherein by operating the control paths in parallel in the predetermined sequence, the apparatus does not have to wait a request-acknowledge cycle time between the sender and the receiver before sending consecutive data items through the shared data path, but instead sends multiple data items through the shared data path within a single request-acknowledge cycle time.