Patent ID: 7272672

Claim:
A system for performing flow control between a sender and receiver of data interconnected by a bus in a networked system comprising: a counter maintained at the sender; first logic for decrementing the counter by the size of a block of data upon or after transmission of the block to the receiver; second logic for incrementing the counter by the amount of incremental free space which has become available in one or more buffers maintained at the receiver upon or after receipt of a first command from the receiver; third logic for comparing the contents of the counter with the size of the block while the sender is in a first state, and (1) avoiding or deferring transmitting the block to the receiver if the size of the block exceeds the contents of the counter, or (2) transmitting the data to the receiver if the size of the block does not exceed the contents of the counter; and fourth logic for storing in the counter a value representative of the amount of absolute free space which is available in the one or more buffers upon or after receipt of a second command from the receiver.