Patent ID: 7111098

Claim:
An information processing apparatus, comprising: receiving means for receiving a first request signal from a given one of a plurality of modules and a second request signal from another one of the plurality of modules, the first request signal requesting bus acquisition for the given one of the plurality of modules and the second request signal requesting bus acquisition for the another one of the plurality of modules, the given one of the plurality of modules being one of an encoder and a decoder and the another one of the plurality of modules being another of the encoder and the decoder; measurement means for measuring a first time interval from when the first request signal is received by said receiving means and for measuring a second time interval from when the second request signal is received by said receiving means; comparison means for comparing the measured first time interval to each of a first predetermined value and a second predetermined value and for comparing the measured second time interval to each of the first predetermined value and the second predetermined value, the second predetermined value being greater than the first predetermined value; priority assignment means for assigning a higher priority of bus acquisition to the given one of the plurality of modules or to the another one of the plurality of modules based on a result of the comparing carried out by said comparison means; and control means for controlling acquisition of the bus for the plurality of modules based on the assigned higher priority.