Patent ID: 7218638

Claim:
A system for servicing data transactions within a processing device using common data paths, the system comprising: a plurality of source agents operable to transmit a plurality of data cells; a plurality of destination agents operable to receive a plurality of data cells; a plurality of virtual channels for transporting said data cells between said source agents and said destination agents; and a switch comprising: an active state combiner operable to generate active state data corresponding to all possible combinations of said source agents and said destination agents that are active for transmission or reception, respectively, of data cells; a connection scheduler operable process said active state data to generate connection grants for selected pairs of said source and destination agents; a plurality of virtual channel schedulers operable to process said active state data to generate virtual channel grants for selected pairs of source and destination agents; wherein a data cell is transferred between a selected source agent and a selected destination agent over a selected virtual channel during a processing cycle; and wherein said connection scheduler and said virtual channel scheduler process said active state data simultaneously to generate said connection grants and said virtual channel grants.