The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
May. 27, 1997
Filed:
Aug. 09, 1994
Kevin F Jennings, Novi, MI (US);
Unisys Corporation, Blue Bell, PA (US);
Abstract
An apparatus for and method of granting access to a shared resource wherein the shared resource is accessed by a plurality of users. In a first exemplary embodiment of the present invention, a priority controller can assign priority to a number of users based upon the combination of shared resource request signals received by the priority controller. For each combination of shared resource request signals, a different priority may be assigned to each user by the priority controller. In another exemplary embodiment of the present invention, each user may supply additional information bits to the priority controller to indicate a 'requested priority' for a the shared resource. The priority controller then weighs the priority requests from each user, including the additional information bits, and determines an optimum priority assignment. That is, the users themselves may influence the priority assigned thereto by providing the additional information bits to the priority controller.