Patent ID: 7986706

Claim:
An apparatus, comprising: a queue memory enqueue/dequeue and hierarchical traffic manager admission arbiter to perform the following: arbitrate between a set of one or more requesters including new packet enqueue requests and queue reentry requests, and selectively admit queues corresponding to the new packet enqueue requests and queue reentry requests into a hierarchical pipelined distributed scheduling traffic manager; and the hierarchical pipelined distributed scheduling traffic manager coupled with the queue memory enqueue/dequeue and hierarchical traffic manager admission arbiter, the hierarchical pipelined distributed scheduling traffic manager including the following: a lowest level including a plurality of nodes each associated with a node of one of a plurality of intermediate levels, each node at the lowest level representing a different queue, the plurality of intermediate levels each including a plurality of nodes each associated with a plurality of nodes at a lower level and a node at a higher level, each node of the intermediate levels to include a scheduler to perform the following: select winning queues between the associated plurality of nodes at the lower level, and propagate the winning queues to the associated node at the higher level, and a highest level including a node associated with a plurality of nodes at a lower level, the node to include a scheduler to perform the following: select winning queues between the associated plurality of nodes at the lower level, cause the winning queues to exit the hierarchical pipelined distributed scheduling traffic manager, and generate queue reentry requests corresponding to the winning queues.