
MOTOROLA
Chapter 8. PCI Bus Interface
8-5
PCI Bus Arbitration
The grant given to a particular device may be removed and awarded to another, higher
priority device, whenever the higher priority device asserts its request. If the bus is idle
when a device requests the bus, then for one clock cycle the arbiter withholds the grant. The
arbiter re-evaluates the priorities of all requesting devices and grants the bus to the highest
priority device in the following clock cycle. This allows a turnaround clock when a higher
priority device is using address stepping or when the bus is parked.
The low-priority group collectively has one bus transaction request slot in the high-priority
group. Mathematically, if there are N high-priority devices, and M low-priority devices,
then each high-priority device is guaranteed to get at least 1 of N+1 bus transactions, and
each low priority device is guaranteed to get at least 1 of (N+1) x M bus transactions, with
one of the low-priority devices receiving the grant in 1 of N+1 bus transactions. If all
devices are programmed to the same priority level, or if there is only one device in the low
priority group, then the arbitration algorithm defaults to each device receiving an equal
number of bus grants, in round-robin sequence.
Figure 8-1 shows an example of the arbitration algorithm. Assume that several masters are
requesting use of the bus. If there are two masters in the high priority group and three in the
low priority group, then each high-priority master is guaranteed at least 1 out of 3
transaction slots, and each low-priority master is guaranteed 1 out of 9 transaction slots.
In Figure 8-1, the grant sequence (with all devices except device 4 requesting the bus and
device 3 being the current master) is 0, 2, MPC8240, 0, 2, 1, 0, 2, 3, é and repeating. If
device 2 is not requesting the bus, then the grant sequence is 0, MPC8240, 0, 1, 0, 3, é and
repeating. If device 2 requests the bus when device 0 is conducting a transaction and the
MPC8240 has the next grant, then the MPC8240 will have its grant removed and device 2
will be awarded the grant since device 2 is of higher priority than the MPC8240 when
device 0 has the bus.
Figure 8-1. PCI Arbitration Example
Device 2
(1/3)
Device 0
(1/3)
Low
priority
slot
High Priority Group
Device 1
(1/9)
MPC8240
(1/9)
Device 3
(1/9)
Low Priority Group
(1/3)