The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Jan. 12, 1999
Filed:
May. 09, 1996
Paul V Bergantino, Arlington, MA (US);
Daniel J Lussier, Bellingham, MA (US);
Maker Communications, Inc., Framingham, MA (US);
Abstract
Methods and apparatus for processing cells in an asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) communication system. An ATM cell processor provides a cell buffer RAM (CBR) memory space gathering protocol which allows unused portions of a number of cell buffers to be addressed as a contiguous virtual memory space. The space gathering protocol may utilize a CPU or direct memory access (DMA) controller in an ATM cell processor to set a gather bit appended to a virtual CBR address. An address generator in the CBR detects the gather bit and translates those virtual addresses which include a set gather bit to physical addresses into the CBR memory space. The translation is performed by setting certain bits of the physical address to predetermined states to reach the unused 8 bytes at the bottom of any given 64-byte cell buffer, and shifting certain bits of the virtual address to other positions in the physical address to move from cell buffer to cell buffer in the contiguous virtual space. Multiple gather spaces may be supported in alternative embodiments by using a different number of gather bits.