Panasonic Corporation

Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd.

Panasonic Corporaton

Yoshiharu Watanabe

Daisuke Murakami

Yuji Takai

Isao Kawamoto

Takahide Baba

Seiji Horii

Toshihiro Fukuyama

Takashi Morimoto

Takashi Hashimoto

Takashi Yamada

Koji Asai

Tetsuji Kishi

Provided is a hierarchical arbitration device wherein an arbitration device at each level of the hierarchy selects a resource use request having the highest priority and a resource use request having the second highest priority, outputting these two resource use requests to the arbitration device that is one level higher. After outputting the memory use request having the highest priority to a resource control unit as the top priority resource use request, when the arbitration device at the highest level of the hierarchy receives a signal from the memory control unit indicating receipt of the resource use request, the arbitration device then selects the resource use request having the second highest priority and outputs this resource request as the next top priority resource use request.

Arbitration device, arbitration system, arbitration method, semiconductor integrated circuit, and image processing device

The memory access device includes: a plurality of command division sections provided for a plurality of masters; a plurality of inter-master arbitration sections provided for a plurality of banks; and a memory control section. Each of the command division sections divides a command issued by the corresponding master into a plurality of micro-commands when the access region of the command is over two or more banks among the plurality of banks, each of the micro-commands being a command accessing only one of the two or more banks, and gives each of the micro-commands to an inter-master arbitration section corresponding to the bank including the access region of the micro-command. Each of the inter-master arbitration sections arbitrates micro-commands given from the command division sections to select one. The memory control section selects one of a plurality of micro-commands selected by the inter-master arbitration sections to perform memory access.

Device for controlling access from a plurality of masters to shared memory composed of a plurality of banks each having a plurality of pages

An access request arbitration section, a data amount management section and a resource control section are provided between a plurality of masters and a shared resource. The data amount management section manages access data amounts passing between the plurality of masters and the resource. The access request arbitration section executes arbitrary arbitration of issuing access permission to a master determined according to the access data amount at any timing, in addition to periodic arbitration of issuing access permission to any of the masters at fixed-interval arbitration timing. If an access request of less than a defined data amount is granted in periodic arbitration, the remaining access chance can be used in arbitrary arbitration.

Resource management device

Bandwidth information including a plurality of slots each having highest priority order information for arbitrating access conflict, and priority master information for specifying, as a priority master, one or more of a plurality of masters whose latency in accessing a memory serving as a shared resource is desired to be reduced are included as arbitration information. When an arbitration section arbitrates access conflict while switching the slots in the bandwidth information at each of predetermined arbitration timings, if there is an access request from the priority master specified in the priority master information, the arbitration section changes the sequence of the slots in the bandwidth information so as to allow the priority master to access the memory with priority.

A resource management device of the present invention, used in a system where at least one bus master is connected to each of a plurality of buses, includes: a bus arbitration section for arbitrating an amount of access to be made from the buses to a shared resource; an arbitration information management section for managing, as bus arbitration information, a bus priority order and a highest access priority pattern for ensuring a predetermined access bandwidth to the shared resource for each bus for an arbitration operation by the bus arbitration section; and a resource control section for controlling, based on characteristics of the shared resource, an access to the shared resource from the bus whose access request has been granted by the bus arbitration section. Thus, it is possible to guarantee a minimum bandwidth for access to the shared resource for each of the plurality of bus masters.

Growing community of inventors

Kyoto, Japan

Yoshiharu Watanabe