Arbitrating requests on computer buses

Details Arbitrating requests on computer buses Arbitrating requests on computer buses

1999-12-27

2003-09-30

Auve, Glenn A. (Department: 2189)

Electrical computers and digital data processing systems: input/

Access arbitrating

C710S244000, C710S241000, C710S243000

Reexamination Certificate

active

06629177

ABSTRACT:

BACKGROUND
This invention relates to arbitrating requests on computer buses.
Computer buses carry data from one part of a computer to another. As shown in
FIG. 1
, input/output (I/O) buses
12
carry data from I/O units
10
such as keyboards, disk drives, and graphics devices. The I/O bus
12
, e.g., a peripheral component interconnect (PCI) bus, carries the data through a bridge
14
to a system bus
16
. The system bus
16
carries data and processing requests to and from the central processing unit (CPU)
18
and random access memory (RAM)
20
.
Instead of traveling on an I/O bus
12
, graphics data and processing requests may travel on a special channel, e.g., an accelerated graphics port (AGP)
22
. AGP
22
carries data and processing requests, in the order it receives it, from a graphics device
24
directly to the CPU
18
.
SUMMARY
In general, in one aspect, the invention features receiving arbitration requests belonging to respective bus types and associating with each of the types a programmed value representing a potential number of times that requests of that type may win arbitration events that occur in a given time period. For at least some arbitration events that occur in the given time period, the invention updates a counter value for at least some of the types, the counter value for each of the types being set initially to the programmed value, and chooses a winning type in each of the arbitration events based on at least some of the counter values of the types of requests that are contending in the arbitration event.
Other advantages and features will become apparent from the following description and from the claims.


REFERENCES:
patent: 5265257 (1993-11-01), Simcoe et al.
patent: 5857110 (1999-01-01), Sakakibara et al.
patent: 6092137 (2000-07-01), Huang et al.
patent: 6363445 (2002-03-01), Jeddeloh
patent: 6385678 (2002-05-01), Jacobs et al.

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