An arbitrator for managing access to a collective resource, the arbitrator comprising:
- a process selector for selecting a single access request from a plurality of access requests, the process selector using a first selection process to select the single access request when the plurality of access requests consists only of access requests possessing a lowest priority in a fixed-priority order, the lowest priority level comprising latency-insensitive noncritical processes in write mode, and
- a fixed-priority selector for granting access to the collective resource for a single access request from the plurality of access requests, the fixed-priority selector using a second selection process to select an access request using the fixed-priority order, wherein the fixed-priority selector selects the access request possessing a highest priority,
- wherein an output of the process selector is a lowest priority input of the fixed-priority selector.