Patent ID: 7817543

Claim:
A device for regulating transfer of data bursts from a burst buffer, each data burst belonging to one of a number S, S>1, of data streams, where said data streams share a channel of transmission rate R, said device comprising: a flow-rate-allocation memory containing a flow-rate allocation ρ j , 0≦j<S, for each of said S burst streams; a burst-record memory containing S records having one-to-one correspondence to said S streams; a burst-size calculator for determining a nominal burst size B j for burst stream j, 0≦j<S, as B j ≦{min{ρ j ×Δ 1 , R×Δ 2 }, where Δ 1 is a specified burst-formation delay upper bound, Δ 2 is a specified transmission-duration upper bound; and a controller for: forming data bursts for each active data stream so that a data burst belonging to stream j, 0≦j<S, has a size not exceeding B j ; placing said data burst in a burst buffer; populating said burst-record memory to indicate a size of a waiting data burst in said burst buffer belonging to a specific data stream and a current credit of said specific data stream; visiting each record j, 0≦j<S, in said burst-record memory with a mean periodicity of at most (ρ j /B j ) visits per time unit; and transmitting said each record j to a scheduler for determining exact time instants at which a burst of respective data stream is to be transmitted.