Patent ID: 7710952

Claim:
A system, comprising: one or more processing units, each of the one or more processing units including a centralized counter to perform accounting for the respective processing unit; and an external memory associated with at least one of the one or more processing units to store a plurality of count values for the at least one processing unit, where the external memory includes: a roll-over region that includes count values that continually reset when the count values of the roll-over region reach a first threshold, and a saturation region that includes count values that stop incrementing when the count values of the saturation region reach a second threshold, where the centralized counter includes: a base pointer table to store a plurality of pointers to blocks of count values in the external memory, and an offset table to store offset values that identify a location of a count value within one of the blocks, and where the centralized counter is to receive count update requests, each of the count update requests including a source number that identifies a source of a data unit received by a respective one of the processing units, an event number that identifies an event associated with the data unit, and an increment amount that identifies an amount that a count value associated with the event is to be incremented.