Management of pci read access to a central resource

Abstract

A PCI read access management system and method to manage read access between two agents providing PCI read requests to conduct contiguous read operations to a central resource at a PCI bus. Dual transaction control logic units are each respectively coupled to a separate one of the agents. An arbitration request connection couples the dual transaction control logic units. A PCI read request by one of the agents (e.g., agent A), and recognized by one of the dual transaction control logic units (e.g., unit ), is signaled to the arbitration request connection, which arbitrates between the transaction control logic units for reserving the PCI bus for the one agent (agent A), and the one transaction control logic unit (unit ) provides read access to the PCI bus for the one agent (agent A) for the contiguous read operations. The one transaction control logic unit (unit ) then maintains the reservation until completion of the contiguous read operations.