As an endnote, we might wonder how we could possibly build a "fair circuit," that is, a device which would truly randomly choose between one bus initiator and another. The SR latch discussed in an earlier chapter is one way of doing this. By setting both S and R inputs to 1, something not normally done, the circuit oscillates until both inputs go off, and then it jumps to one of its two stable states, in effect randomly choosing Q or Q' to be 1. |