Bus arbiter for facilitating access to a storage medium in enhanced burst mode using freely specifiable address increments/decrements

In a system comprising a storage medium coupled to a bus, a method for managing access to said storage medium via said bus, comprising the acts of:

• receiving an access request from one or more hosts desiring to access said storage medium;
• selecting a host to which to grant access to said storage medium;
• receiving from the selected host a set of request information including a starting address and a decremental value;
• storing said starting address into an address register;
• allowing said starting address to be applied to said storage medium via said bus, thereby causing said storage medium to be accessed at a location having said starting address;
• decrementing the address stored in said address register by said decremental value to derive a subsequent address;
• and
• applying said subsequent address to said storage medium via said bus, thereby causing said storage medium to be accessed at a location having said subsequent address.

In a system comprising a storage medium coupled to a bus, a bus arbiter coupled to said bus for managing access to said storage medium via said bus, comprising:

• an address register;
• an incremental register;
• an arbitration mechanism coupled to receive an access request from one or more hosts desiring to access said storage medium, said arbitration mechanism selecting, based upon a predetermined set of criteria, a host to which to grant access to said storage medium;
• a request processing mechanism coupled to receive from the selected host a set of request information including a starting address and an incremental value, said request processing mechanism storing said starting address into said address register and said incremental value into said incremental register;
• and
• a control mechanism coupled to said address register and said incremental register, said control mechanism allowing said starting address to be applied to said storage medium via said bus to cause said storage medium to be accessed at a location having said starting address, said control mechanism further incrementing the address stored in said address register by the incremental value stored in said incremental register to derive a subsequent address, and applying said subsequent address to said storage medium via said bus to cause said storage medium to be accessed at a location having said subsequent address.

In a system comprising a storage medium coupled to a bus, a bus arbiter coupled to said bus for managing access to said storage medium via said bus, comprising:

• an address register;
• a decremental register;
• an arbitration mechanism coupled to receive an access request from one or more hosts desiring to access said storage medium, said arbitration mechanism selecting, based upon a predetermined set of criteria, a host to which to grant access to said storage medium;
• a request processing mechanism coupled to receive from the selected host a set of request information including a starting address and a decremental value, said request processing mechanism storing said starting address into said address register and said decremental value into said decremental register;
• and
• a control mechanism coupled to said address register and said decremental register, said control mechanism allowing said starting address to be applied to said storage medium via said bus to cause said storage medium to be accessed at a location having said starting address, said control mechanism further decrementing the address stored in said address register by the decremental value stored in said decremental register to derive a subsequent address, and applying said subsequent address to said storage medium via said bus to cause said storage medium to be accessed at a location having said subsequent address.