Patent ID: 7058053

Claim:
A method to process a multicast transfer request within an interconnect device, the method including: receiving the multicast transfer request pertaining to a packet stored by the interconnect device; spawning a number of unicast transfer requests based on the multicast transfer request, wherein the unicast transfer requests are specified by a set of bits within a multicast vector; generating a spawn count of the number of unicast transfer requests spawned based on the multicast request; responding to a generation of a transfer grant for at least one of the number of unicast transfer requests; determining whether transfer grants have been generated for all of the number of unicast transfer requests; discarding the packet to which the multicast transfer request pertains, if transfer grants have been generated for all of the number of unicast transfer requests; and retaining the packet to which the multicast transfer request pertains, if transfer grants have not been generated for all of the number of unicast transfer requests.