Cisco Technology, Inc.

Sarig Livne

Doron Shoham

Rami Zemach

Alon Ratinsky

John Joseph Williams, Jr

Moshe Voloshin

Amir Michaeli

John J Williams

Ehud Finkelstein

Disclosed are, inter alia, methods, apparatus, data structures, computer-readable media, and mechanisms, for matching items with resources, such as, but not limited to packet processing contexts, output links, memory, storage, specialized hardware or software, compute cycles, or any other entity. One implementation includes means for maintaining distribution groups of items, means for maintaining differently aged resources queues, and means for matching resources identified as being at the head of the plurality of differently aged resources queues and as being primarily and secondarily associated with said distribution groups based on a set of predetermined criteria. For example, even though processing contexts can be shared among different distribution groups of packets, by giving preference to assigning recently used processing contexts for processing packets of a same distribution group, it is more likely that the processing instructions are already in the memory of this processing context, and therefore, processing will not be delayed until such instructions are retrieved into memory.

Assigning resources to items such as processing contexts for processing packets

A virtual address storage system, which may be of particular used in generating fragmented packets, is implemented using a linked list of data segments. Multiple storage segments linked together in a linked list data structure are maintained to represent a virtual contiguous block of storage to be accessed based on a virtual address. Virtual address to corresponding data segment pointer associations are maintained for identifying a data segment corresponding to a particular address within the address space. In response to an identified address in the address space, a particular closest dynamic recently used association is identified and used to traverse to the desired data segment (e.g. rather than traversing from the beginning of the linked list), and one of the dynamic recently used associations is updated. A packet can be stored in this address space along with newly generated packet headers and tails for the multiple fragmented packets.

Virtual address storage which may be of particular use in generating fragmented packets

Methods and apparatus are disclosed for dynamically mapping between sets of entities. In one implementation, queues corresponding to a particular output are mapped into a sequential set of renamed queue identifiers. In transmitting an item, a particular renamed queue identifier is selected, and then the particular item is communicated from the actual queue to the particular output. In one implementation, groups corresponding to a particular output are mapped into a sequential set of renamed group identifiers, and queues corresponding to a particular renamed group are mapped into a sequential set of renamed queue identifiers. In transmitting an item, a particular renamed group identifier is selected, and then a particular renamed queue identifier from within is selected. In one implementation, a second set of mappings is generated while the system uses a first set of mappings, and then the system switches in real-time to the second set of mappings.

Method and apparatus for generating and using dynamic mappings between sets of entities such as between output queues and ports in a communications system

Growing community of inventors

Tel Aviv, Israel

Sarig Livne