Cortina Systems Corporation

Xilinx, Inc.

Inphi Corporation

Cisco Systems Inc.

Fredrik Olsson

Ryan Patrick Donohue

Shawn Lawrence Scouten

Med Belhadj

Mark Andrew Gustlin

Farhad Shafai

Sebastian H Ziesler

Hojjat Salemi

Martin Green

Apparatus and techniques relating to data interface power consumption control are disclosed. Components of a data transfer module may be selectively moved between their normal operating states and reduced power states at times when the data transfer module is not to be used for transferring data. Decisions as to particular components that are to be moved to their reduced power states may be based on respective timing characteristics of the components and/or respective power consumption characteristics of the components, for example. In some embodiments, an action may be performed to reduce a powering up time of the data transfer module when normal operation of the data transfer module is to resume. In the case of a multiple-connection interface having respective data transfer modules for each connection, the interface may be partially shut down by moving a subset of the data transfer modules into reduced power states.

Data interface power consumption control

Systems and methods for a network device to update timing packets to reflect delay are provided. A timing packet processor is externally connected to the network device. All timing packets are processed by the timing packet processor. The timing packets are updated to reflect an estimate of delay introduced by the network device.

Systems and methods for a network device to update timing packets to reflect delay

An apparatus consisting of a digital communication channel comprised of a multiplicity of lanes where data is striped across the lanes in a predefined sequence. Each lane has the ability to be powered down or powered up in response to the amount of data being held in a transmit buffer at one end of the communication channel. The method consists of monitoring the amount of data being held in the transmit buffer; making the decision of how many lanes are required based on the amount of data; sending signals to cause the required number of lanes to be powered down or powered up; and performing the required power down or power up action at the particular transmitter and receiver. The fill level of the transmit buffer is continually monitored and the required number of active lanes and the striping sequence is calculated and updated as required as a function of the fill level, where a larger amount of data waiting to be transmitted will result in a greater number of lanes being powered up and a smaller amount of data waiting to be transmitted will result in a lesser number of lanes being powered up.

Method and apparatus for adaptive power control in a multi-lane communication channel

Port multiplexing apparatus and methods are disclosed. Time slots in a time division multiplexing (TDM) scheme are allocated to transfer signals such as Ethernet or Fiber Channel packets associated with ports of a signal processing device. Signals associated with multiple ports are transferred between those ports and another signal processing device over a single logical link in accordance with the time slot allocation. An indication of the time slot allocation may also be transferred on the link, illustratively by replacing protocol overhead traffic to be transmitted on the link with allocation information. At a receiver, the replaced protocol overhead traffic may be substituted back into a received multiplexed signal. A port multiplexing apparatus may be controllable to operate in a multiplexing mode or in a non-multiplexing mode. Aspects of the invention may also be embodied in other forms, such as in a data structure stored on a machine-readable medium.

Port multiplexing apparatus and methods

A transceiver module includes a protocol converter for converting between the data protocol of a host and a network. In one embodiment the module performs protocol conversion between a TDM data protocol of an external network and a gigabit Ethernet data protocol of host, thereby eliminating the need for additional line cards to perform protocol conversion.

Growing community of inventors

Los Altos, CA, United States of America

Fredrik Olsson