Patent ID: 7822066

Claim:
A system for processing packets of a communication protocol, the packets including a plurality of fields that include at least one variable size field, the circuit comprising: an extraction circuit that determines sizes of the at least one variable size field for each of the packets; a plurality of operation circuits, each operation circuit accessing at least one of the fields of each packet, each operation circuit including a control circuit that determines a position in each packet for each field accessed by the operation circuit, wherein the position of an accessed field in the packets varies according to changes in size of the at least one variable size field in the packets; and a reconfiguration circuit coupled to the extraction circuit and to the control circuit of each of the operation circuits, wherein responsive to a change in size of the at least one field from one packet to a next packet, the reconfiguration circuit reconfigures the control circuit of at least one of the operation circuits to determine the position in the next packet of each field accessed by the at least one operation circuit.