Patent ID: 8331380

Claim:
A network device, comprising: a port interface, in communication with a plurality of ports, to-receive data packets from a data network and to process the data packets for sending to the data network using the plurality of ports; a search engine to receive a data packet of the data packets and obtain search results used to process the data packet, wherein the data packet includes a head portion and a tail portion, and the search results include head search results derived from the head portion and tail search results derived from the tail portion; and a bookkeeping memory to store the head search results until the tail search results are available, wherein the port interface is to write the head search results to the bookkeeping memory and to read the head search results from the bookkeeping memory, and to process the data packet, wherein processing the data packet includes making a provisional decision regarding the processing of the data packet when the head search results are derived, and updating the provisional decision based on the tail search results by, at least in part, accessing both the head search results and tail search results in a single memory access.