Patent ID: 7779189

Claim:
A method for pipeline arbitration, comprising: receiving a first request for a shared chip interface from a first pipeline; determining whether a response bus of the shared chip interface is needed by the first request; in response to determining that the response bus is not needed by the first request: concluding that the first request needs just an address bus of the shared chip interface; arbitrating the first request with a second request for the shared chip interface received from a second pipeline for access to the address bus; sending the first request to the address bus if the first request wins the arbitration over the second request; and rejecting the first request if the second request wins the arbitration over the first request; and in response to determining that the response bus is needed by the first request: determining if the response bus is available; rejecting the first request if the response bus is not available; determining whether a data bus of the shared chip interface is needed by the first request if the response bus is available; and in response to determining that the data bus is not needed by the first request: concluding that the first request needs just the response bus; arbitrating the first request with the second request for access to the response bus; sending the first request to the response bus if the first request wins the arbitration over the second request; and rejecting the first request if the second request wins the arbitration over the first request.