Importance

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Abstract

A method and system for priority arbitration in a computer environment having a shared resource capable of servicing a plurality of devices. In one embodiment, the present invention assigns an initial priority order to the plurality of devices such that those devices have priorities which are distinct. The present invention then identifies those of the plurality of devices which have issued service requests to the shared resource in a first clock cycle as requesting devices. Provided that there are more than one requesting device in the first clock cycle, the present invention selects one of the requesting devices to be serviced by the shared resource in a second clock cycle following the first clock cycle, where the selected device has the highest of the priorities among the requesting devices based on the initial priority order. The present invention also reassigns the priorities among the plurality of devices such that the selected device is assigned the lowest one of the priorities. This embodiment of the present invention thus provides a novel method and system for single cycle priority arbitration which is fair and which does not require extra memory storage for its implementation.

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First Claim