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:
Jun. 22, 2004
Filed:
Sep. 10, 2002
Hyung Won Kim, San Jose, CA (US);
Dennis S. Lee, Saratoga, CA (US);
Broadcom Corporation, Irvine, CA (US);
Abstract
A process of handling packet data in a packet buffer is disclosed. Free pointers are stored in a plurality of free pointer queues, with each of the plurality free pointer queues in a form of a linked list and the free pointers are retrieved from each of the plurality of free pointer queues and storing in a prefetch memory to provide a throughput of one free pointer per clock cycle. When an initial portion of a data packet is received, two free pointers are retrieved from the prefetch memory. One of the two free pointers is stored in a start pointer register connoting a start of the data packet and one free pointer is supplied for data elements of the data packet. One free pointer per middle data element is supplied, while no new pointer is needed for the end of packet data element. The start of the data packet is linked with an end of packet portion of a previously received packet in an output queue memory and a data element is read out of the data packet from the output queue memory when selected by a transmission scheduler and releasing a pointer of the data element to one of the plurality of free pointer queues in a way that balances the lengths of all free pointer queues. Additionally, all pointers of a packet are released to one of the plurality of free pointer queues within one cycle when the packet is dropped.