Processing resource allocation within an integrated circuit supporting transaction requests of different priority levels

Abstract

An integrated circuitincludes a plurality of transaction sourcescommunicating via a ring-based interconnectwith shared cacheseach having an associated POC/POSand serving as a request servicing circuit. The request servicing circuits have a set of processing resourcesthat may be allocated to different transactions. These processing resources may be allocated either dynamically or statically. Static allocation can be made in dependence upon a selection algorithm. This selection algorithm may use a quality of service value/priority level as one of its input variables. A starvation ratio may also be defined such that lower priority levels are forced to be selected if they are starved of allocation for too long. A programmable mapping may be made between quality of service values and priority levels. The maximum number of processing resources allocated to each priority level may also be programmed.