Patent ID: 7774374

Claim:
An integrated circuit comprising a hardware wildcard search controller for generating a queue-specific read request from a wildcard read request, the queue-specific read request comprising an identifier of a non-empty target linked-list queue selected from a linked-list queue segment comprising a plurality of linked-list queue sets, each linked-list queue set comprising a plurality of linked-list queues, the wildcard search controller comprising: a segment request state controller configured to: receive an agent wildcard read request, identify a search-start linked-list queue, transmit an identifier of the search start linked-list queue, receive an identifier of the non-empty target linked-list queue, assign the non-empty target linked-list queue to be an updated search start linked-list queue for a subsequent wildcard read request; a zoom-out search controller connected to the segment request state controller, configured to: receive the identifier of the search start linked-list queue from the segment request state controller, employ the identifier of the search start linked-list queue to identify a search target linked-list queue set, and transmit an identifier of the search target linked-list queue set; and a zoom-in search controller connected to the zoom-out search controller, configured to: receive the identifier of the search target linked-list queue set, identify the non-empty target linked-list queue by retrieving linked-list queue states for linked-list queues belonging to the search target linked-list queue set, and transmit the identifier of the non-empty target linked-list queue.