Patent ID: 8213461

Claim:
A method of designating slots of a transmission frame for controlling transmission of data over an interconnect coupling a plurality of master units with a plurality of slave units, said transmission frame comprising a plurality of said slots, each of said plurality of slots transmits at least a portion of said data in a system-on-a-chip over said interconnect, said method of designating slots comprising the steps of: receiving a frame arrangement for said transmission frame, said frame arrangement specifying, for each of at least a subset of slots of said transmission frame, whether the slot is a first type of slot, a second type of slot or a third type of slot so as to define a transmission frame comprising a combination of slots of at least one of said first type, said second type and said third type; and allocating slots of said transmission frame for data transmission based on said frame arrangement, said allocating step comprising: i) determining, based on said frame arrangement, whether a current slot is of said first type, said second type or said third type; ii) if said current slot is determined to be of said first type, allocating said current slot to one predetermined master unit for data transmission with any of said plurality of slave units; iii) if said current slot is determined to be of said second type, allocating said current slot to any master unit for data transmission with any of said plurality of slave units; and iv) if said current slot is determined to be of said third type, allocating said current slot to a predetermined one of said plurality of master units and said plurality of slave units, said slot of said third type being reallocatable to one of said plurality of master units, thereby providing an efficient transmission frame for transmission of data between at least one of said master units and at least one of said slave units.