Patent ID: 7716314

Claim:
A method of managing traffic over a network comprising: receiving incoming traffic from the network in a digital signal processing integrated circuit having at least 128K bytes of on-chip memory; performing a policing function on the incoming traffic to the digital signal processing integrated circuit in a first core of the digital signal processing integrated circuit; performing a congestion control function in a second core of the digital signal processing integrated circuit, wherein the second core processes data generated by the first core; performing a scheduling function in a third core of the digital signal processing integrated circuit, wherein the third core processes data generated by the second core; and performing a shaping function in a fourth core of the digital signal processing integrated circuit, wherein the fourth core processes data generated by the third core, wherein the digital signal processing integrated circuit performs a method comprising: from the incoming traffic, receiving a first entry to be stored in a memory location of the at least 128K bytes of on-chip memory, wherein the first entry has a time stamp value, represented in a floating point format, and a data value; dividing the time stamp value of the first entry into two or more portions, a first time stamp portion and a second time stamp portion; providing a first pointer memory structure, referred to by a first pointer address, having a head and a body, wherein the head comprises a bit map field and a pointer-to-body field; providing a second pointer memory structure having a head and a body, wherein the head comprises a bit map field and a pointer-to-body field; storing a second pointer address in the body of the first pointer memory structure based on the first time stamp portion; and indicating the position in the head of the first pointer, wherein the second pointer address points to the second pointer memory structure.