Intel Corporation

Raman Muthukrishnan

Anujan Varma

In general, in one aspect, the disclosure describes a switching device that includes a plurality of ingress ports to receive data from external sources and a plurality of egress ports to transmit data to external destinations. The switching device also includes a plurality of queues to store data waiting to be transmitted from a particular ingress port to a particular egress port. A request generator generates requests for permission to transmit data for the queues. A request indicates a cumulative amount of data contained in a respective queue. A switching matrix provides selective connectivity between the ingress ports and the egress ports. The switching device further includes a scheduler to receive the requests, generate grants based thereon, and configure the switching matrix. The scheduler incorporates a mechanism to periodically monitor its operating efficiency and perturb its internal state when its efficiency is below a certain desired level.

Scheduling system utilizing pointer perturbation mechanism to improve efficiency

In general, in one aspect, a switching device includes a plurality of ingress ports to receive data from external sources and a plurality of egress ports to transmit data to external destinations. The switching device also includes a plurality of queues to store data waiting to be transmitted from a particular ingress port to a particular egress port. A request generator generates requests for permission to transmit data for the queues. A request indicates a cumulative amount of data contained in a respective queue. A switching matrix provides selective connectivity between the ingress ports and the egress ports. The switching device further includes a scheduler to receive the requests, generate grants based thereon, and configure the switching matrix. The scheduler operates on a pipeline schedule and modifies the requests received to account for grants generated in current period or previous period not reflected in the queues.

Switching device utilizing requests indicating cumulative amount of data

In general, in one aspect, a switching device is described that includes a segmentation unit to receive packets and divide packets having a length greater than a maximum segment length into multiple segments. A plurality of queues associated with a source and a destination stores the segments. A request generator generates requests that include external factors including amount of data contained in the queue and at least some subset of priority and age. A scheduler receives the requests and assigns the requests an internal priority based on the external factors. The scheduler processes the requests for the queues by internal priority in order to generate grants. A framer, responsive to the scheduler, aggregates a plurality of segments for the queues that received a grant to form a frame and to transmit the frame to an associated destination. The frame may contain segments associated with different packets.

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Santa Clara, CA, United States of America

Raman Muthukrishnan