Abstract: A bus arbitration scheme in a processing system. The processing system includes a bus, a plurality of processors coupled to the bus, and a bus arbiter. The bus arbiter may assign a first tier weight to each of the processors in a first tier, and a second tier weight to each of the processors in a second tier. The bus arbiter may sequentially grant bus access to the one or more processors during an initial portion of a bus interval based on the assigned second tier weights, and grant bus access to any one of the processors during the initial portion of the bus interval in response to a request from said any one of the processors having a first tier weight. When multiple processors are requesting access to the bus, the bus arbiter may grant bus access to the requesting processor with the highest weight in the highest tier.

Abstract: A computer system that has a processor that services interrupts in response to receipt of a signal at the interrupt request has a first device and a second device coupled to the processor. The first device is capable of transmitting a first interrupt request signal that includes an edge transition. The second device is capable of transmitting a second interrupt request signal that comprises a level assertion. An interrupt handler is coupled to the processor and the first and second devices, the interrupt handler receiving the first and second interrupt request signals as inputs and providing the first and second interrupt request signals as outputs to the processor in a sequence according to a predetermined criteria, the first and second interrupt request signals having identical priority.