A computer system having a peripheral bus and a digital signal processor (DSP) local bus interfacing to the peripheral bus via an extended bus interface circuit (EBIC). The DSP local bus is configured such that devices, which are typically two or more DSPs, electrically connected to the DSP local bus may transfer data to other devices connected to the DSP local bus regardless of data transfer activity of the peripheral bus. Moreover, as seen from the peripheral bus, the devices connected to the DSP local bus have the same arbitration level. However, as seen from the DSP local bus, each device connected to the DSP local bus has a unique arbitration level determined by the priority of the tasks executing on the respective devices, as determined by a DSP operating system.