A distributed arbitration scheme includes arbiters with each agent. The arbiters receive request signals indicating which agents are arbitrating for the bus. Additionally, the agent currently using the bus broadcasts an agent identifier assigned to that agent. The arbiters receive the agent identifier and use the agent identifier as an indication of the winner of the preceding arbitration. Accordingly, the arbiters determine if the corresponding agent wins the arbitration, but may not attempt to calculate which other agent wins the arbitration. In one embodiment, the arbiter maintains a priority state indicative of which of the other agents are higher priority than the corresponding agent and which of the other agents are lower priority. In one implementation, the bus may be a split transaction bus and thus each requesting agent may include an address arbiter and each responding agent may include a data arbiter.