Patent ID: 7733898

Claim:
A network comprising: a ring interconnect to transmit a plurality of bits, wherein one of the bits is a slot reservation bit; and a plurality of nodes coupled to the ring interconnect, wherein each node comprises: a starvation detection element to detect a number of unsuccessful attempts to dispatch a packet into a slot in the ring interconnect, wherein the starvation detection element comprises a starvation counter set to a first value wherein each unsuccessful dispatch results in the starvation counter being changed, each successful dispatch results in a reset to the first value, and the starvation counter reaching a final value indicates a starvation state; a slot reservation element to reserve a first slot on the ring interconnect for future use by the node if said starvation detection element detects that the number of unsuccessful attempts to dispatch the packet into the first slot in the ring interconnect exceeds a threshold; and a slot tracking element, wherein the slot tracking element comprises a circular shift register to track a location of slots reserved by said each node.