Improved method of round robin bus arbitration

Abstract From the Canadian patent

An arbitration unit contains a method of arbitration which includes distributed arbitration, a priority mechanism to support different classes of traffic, a unique arbitration ID bits for each module a round robin , arbitration within a given priority level to produce fair access to a bus (36), an arbitration timeout, and a bandwidth allocation between priority levels. The method of round robin bus arbitration includes the steps of providing a plurality of modules, providing a bus having a plurality of data lines, the bus connecting the plurality of modules the bus having an , arbitration unit, setting the bus to a wait state signaling a first bus , request to the bus by a first …