Patent ID: 6397316
Filing Date: 2002-05-28
Classification: H04L

Abstract:
An apparatus comprising:a bus interface, coupled to a bus of a computer system, to communicate with the computer system; a transmit buffer, coupled to the bus interface, to store data to be transmitted from the computer system to a data network; a receive buffer, coupled to the bus interface, to store data received from the data network for the computer system; a network interface controller, coupling the receive buffer and the transmit buffer to the data network; a buffer address table, coupled to the bus interface, to pre-store a plurality of translated physical addresses of a plurality of buffers pre-allocated in memory of the computer system, wherein memory locations are normally referenced with virtual addresses; and a controller, coupled to the transmit buffer, the receive buffer and the buffer address table, to receive from the computer system data transfer commands that include indices indexing the physical addresses pre-stored in the buffer address table, and in response, controlling transfer of data from the computer system to the transmit buffer, or from the receive buffer to the computer system, through corresponding ones of the pre-allocated buffers using the indexed physical addresses.