Adaptive Resource Management in a Pipelined Arbiter

摘要

A resource arbiter in a system with multiple shared resources and multiple requestors may implement an adaptive resource management approach that takes advantage of time-varying requirements for granting access to at least some of the shared resources. For example, due to pipelining, signal timing issues, or a lack of information, more resources than are required to perform a task may need to be available for allocation to a requestor before its request for the needed resources is granted. The requestor may request only the resources it needs, relying on the arbiter to determine whether additional resources are required in order to grant the request. The arbiter may park a high priority requestor on idle resources, thus allowing requests for those resources by the high priority requestor to be granted on the first clock cycle of a request. Other requests may not be granted until at least a second clock cycle.

主权项

1. A system, comprising:
one or more shared resources; and a resource arbiter; wherein the resource arbiter is configured to:
receive a request from one of a plurality of requestors for a given portion of the one or more shared resources;determine whether or not an amount of the one or more shared resources whose availability is required in order to grant the request during a given one of multiple clock cycles is available, wherein the amount of the one or more shared resources whose availability is required in order to grant the request during the given one of the multiple clock cycles is different than an amount of the one or more shared resources whose availability is required in order to grant the request during another one of the multiple clock cycles; andgrant the request during the given clock cycle in response to determining that the amount of the one or more shared resources whose availability is required in order to grant the request during the given one of the multiple clock cycles is available during the given clock cycle.