Patent · US Expired

Scalable, two-stage round robin arbiter with re-circulation and bounded latency

US7200699B2 · kind B2 · utility

8Cited by
6References
30Claims
0Family size

Assignee

Inventors

Key dates

Filing dateSep 2, 2004
Grant dateApr 3, 2007
Priority date
Expiry dateApr 26, 2025

Classification

  • Technology area (CPC G)Physics
  • CPC primaryG06F13/362
  • WIPO fieldComputer technology
  • WIPO sectorElectrical engineering

Abstract

A scalable, two-stage round-robin arbiter with re-circulation and bounded latency for use in multi-threaded, multi-processing devices. An apparatus implementing the two-stage arbiter includes a plurality of masters configured in a plurality of clusters, a plurality of targets, and an chassis interconnect that may be controlled to selectively connects a given master to a given target. The chassis interconnect includes multiple sets of bus lines connected between the plurality of clusters and the plurality of targets forming a cross-bar interconnect, including sets of bus lines corresponding to a command bus. A two-stage arbitration scheme is employed to arbitrate access to the command bus. The first arbitration stage is used to arbitrate between command requests issued by masters in a given cluster. The second arbitration stage is used to arbitrate between winning first stage command requests. One embodiment of the arbitration scheme employs re-circulation of second stage losers. Another embodiment employs re-prioritization of second stage losers.

Source: USPTO / EPO open patent data. Objective bibliographic and citation counts.