Patent ID: 8923306

Claim:
An apparatus for processing a packet comprising: a tree walk engine (TWE) configured to: receive a key request including a key and a table identifier (TID), the key including data extracted from a packet; parse the key to extract at least one field; select at least one entry in a tree access table indicated by the TID, the entry providing a starting address of a set of rules stored in a memory; and process the entry, based on the at least one field, to determine at least one bucket having a prefetch status and an ordered set of bucket entries, the bucket entries including pointers to respective subsets of rules, the subsets of rules each being a portion of the set of rules; a bucket-walk engine (BWE) configured to retrieve a selection of the subsets of rules from the memory, the selection corresponding to a configuration of the prefetch status; a rule-matching engine (RME) configured to apply the at least one field against each subset of rules of the selection and output a response signal indicating whether the at least one field matches at least one rule of the subsets of rules.