A programmable system arbiter for granting access to a system bus among a plurality of arbiter clients and a central processing unit is disclosed. The programmable system arbiter may include one or more interrupt priority registers, each of the one or more interrupt priority registers associated with an interrupt type; and system arbitration logic operable to arbitrate access to the system bus among the plurality of arbiter clients and the CPU based at least on an analysis of a programmed priority order, the programmed priority order comprising a priority order for each of the plurality of arbiter clients, each of a plurality of operating modes of the central processing unit, and each of the one or more interrupt types.