Network architecture, corresponding vehicle and method

Abstract

The bandwidth of SOC interfaces is exploited while minimizing the number of physical ports via a networking accelerator for use on board a vehicle, for instance, that comprises: media access control (MAC) controller circuitry configured to provide a MAC port layer to control exchange of information, wherein the exchange of information comprises data flow transmission to virtual machine ports (VMPs) over a data link; virtual machine transmission (VM Tx) bridge circuitry configured to handle transmission data flow to the VMPs; transmission router/switch circuitry configured to route/switch data flow from the MAC controller circuitry to the VM Tx bridge circuitry; and queue handler circuitry configured to provide queue management for data flow between the MAC controller circuitry and the VM Tx bridge circuitry. The VM Tx bridge circuitry comprises virtual destination address circuitry configured to implement router/switch virtualization in the transmission router/switch circuitry with a virtual machine transmission descriptor based on a combination of a virtual machine port (VMP) tag indicative of a physical resource in the queue handler circuitry selectable for data flow transmission, and a virtual machine extended identifier (VMEID).