Analog Devices,inc.

Rainer R Hadwiger

Palle Birk

Paul D Krivacek

J&oslash;rn S&oslash;rensen

Jørn Sørensen

A multiple bus architecture includes multiple processors, and one or more shared peripherals such as memory. The architecture includes plural bus masters, each connected to its own bus. There are also plural bus slaves, each connected to its own bus. A bus arbitration module selectively interconnects the buses, so that when the plural bus masters each access a different bus slave, no blocking occurs, and when the plural bus masers each access a same bus slave, bandwidth starvation is avoided. The architecture is supported by a bus arbitration method including hierarchical application of an interrupt-based method, an assigned slot rotation method and a round-robin method, which avoids both bandwidth starvation and lockout during extended periods of bus contention.

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North Andover, MA, United States of America

Rainer R Hadwiger