Preemptive round robin arbiter

An arbiter, comprising:

• a plurality of buffers to store requests for allocation of resources;
• a plurality of flags to indicate a condition in which the request stored in each buffer is almost empty;
• and
• a plurality of selection bits to arbitrate the allocation of resources, the selection bits enhancing the arbitration by operating in conjunction with the plurality of flags to substantially reduce idle time between the requests.

A memory allocation arbitration system, comprising:

• a plurality of first-in first-out (FIFO) buffers to store request items for memory allocation;
• a plurality of almost-empty flags, each almost-empty flag corresponding to one FIFO buffer to indicate that the buffer has only one more request item left;
• and
• a plurality of grant selection bits configured to operate in conjunction with the plurality of almost-empty flags to substantially reduce idle time between the requests.

An arbitration method, comprising:

• storing requests for allocation of resources;
• indicating a condition in which the stored requests are almost empty;
• and
• arbitrating the allocation of resources by providing selection bits that operate in conjunction with indicating a condition to substantially reduce idle time between the requests.