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:
Jul. 21, 1998
Filed:
Sep. 23, 1996
Steven C Miller, Livermore, CA (US);
Jamie Riotto, Montara, CA (US);
James E Tornes, Menlo Park, CA (US);
Ross G Werner, Woodside, CA (US);
Silicon Graphics, Inc., Mountain View, CA (US);
Abstract
The present invention discloses a novel arbitration procedure for selecting among devices in a computer system requesting access to a single resource such as, for example, a system bus or main memory. The arbitration procedure provides an efficient means for guaranteeing the available system bus bandwidth to devices having high bandwidth requirements. Each device can be allotted a certain amount of bandwidth that is guaranteed to be available for that device within a given time interval. Excess bandwidth not consumed by the guaranteed allotments can be used as remainder (e.g., available but not guaranteed) bandwidth by the devices. The arbitration procedure further provides a guaranteed maximum latency so that no device is prevented from completing data transfers in a timely manner. The arbitration procedure still further provides the ability to dynamically program the amount of the bandwidth that is guaranteed a particular device. The arbitration procedure can be applied to a number of different communication platforms and bus protocols.