Patent ID: 7366811

Claim:
A method for bus arbitration in a computer system, the method comprising: granting access to a bus for a first plurality of devices according to a predetermined arbitration scheme for determining in which order the devices of the first plurality receive access to the bus relative to one another, wherein granting access to the bus for the first plurality of devices includes grouping requests associated with the first plurality of devices to create a first pool and sequencing through each request of the first pool according to the predetermined arbitration scheme until access to the bus has been granted for each request of the first pool; automatically altering the predetermined arbitration scheme; and granting access to the bus for a second plurality of devices according to the altered arbitration scheme, wherein granting access to the bus for the second plurality of devices includes grouping requests associated with the second plurality of devices and received subsequent to the requests of the first pool to create a second pool and sequencing through each request of the second pool according to the altered arbitration scheme until access to the bus has been granted for each request of the second pool.