Patent ID: 7684431

Claim:
A method of issuing grants to an ingress port in a switch comprising a plurality of ingress ports, the method comprising: placing a first grant request into an arbitration pool and activating a burst signal at an ingress port, the first grant request placed into the arbitration pool to indicate that the ingress port is requesting access to the switch for one clock cycle to transmit a single word, and the activated burst signal indicating that the ingress port has more than one word available for transfer through the switch; issuing a first grant to the ingress port on a first interval thereby granting permission for the ingress port to access the switch for one clock cycle to transmit the single word; retaining the first grant request in the arbitration pool after the first grant has been issued in response to the activated burst signal; and issuing a subsequent grant to the ingress port on a subsequent interval, the subsequent grant issued before the ingress port has validated the first grant request.