Patent ID: 7000050

Claim:
A contention arbitration apparatus for arbitrating an access contention caused when a plurality of application programs simultaneously attempt to access at least one physical device, said contention arbitration apparatus comprising: a resource information storing section for storing resource information which indicates a correspondence between at least one resource, which defines functions of the at least one physical device, and at least one application program, which is allowed to use functions associated with the at least one resource; a device information storing section for storing device information which indicates a correspondence between a logic device, which defines functions specified by the at least one application program which attempts to access the at least one physical device, and the at least one resource which defines functions required for implementing functions defined by the logic device; a used resource recognizing section for recognizing a resource associated with the logic device specified by the at least one application program by reference to the device information; a resource access determining section for determining, by reference to the resource information, which application program is allowed to access the resource recognized by said used resource recognizing section; and a device access determining section for determining, based on a determination result provided by said resource access determining section, whether the application program which has specified the logic device is able to access the at least one physical device which implements the functions defined by the logic device.