Patent ID: 7733888

Claim:
A method for configuring a system to assign pointers to packets, comprising: configuring a pointer memory of an ingress module of a traffic forwarding system to contain a linked list of available pointers with a head and a tail and a list of unavailable pointers; sorting available pointers by memory interface parameters and memory bank parameters associated with said packet memory; providing a plurality of pointer buffer fields in a memory pointers buffer, where said pointer buffer fields comprises a plurality of sub-buffers, wherein each sorted pointer is placed into one of the sub-buffers corresponding to a memory parameter of said sorted pointer comprising a memory interface parameter and a memory bank parameter; associating respective prime number values with said plurality of pointer buffer fields, wherein said respective prime number values are unique; and configuring a plurality of input interfaces to: obtain a pointer of said packet memory from a sub-buffer of said plurality of pointer buffers fields in accordance with a memory parameter field of a prime number memory parameter increment engine configured as a counter and comprising two values as a memory parameter field sequence, where a first value is contained in a memory interface field register and a second value is contained in a memory bank field register; store a received packet in a packet memory in accordance with said pointer; and increment said counter by adding a unique prime number to said two values of said counter to yield a new memory parameter field sequence.