Patent ID: 8364864

Claim:
A method comprising: receiving, by a fabric component of a network device, packets for forwarding to a recipient component of the network device; storing, by the fabric component, the packets in a stage bank; performing, by the fabric component and during a single clock period, a write operation to move a particular packet of the packets from the stage bank to a free address within a first bank of a storage memory; performing, by the fabric component and during the single clock period, a read operation to remove another packet of the packets from a second bank of the storage memory; performing the read operation comprising: selecting an output queue for the read operation, receiving a bank indicator for the output queue, reading information identifying a pointer memory based on the bank indicator, retrieving, from a link list, an address of the other packet based on the bank indicator, assigning, to the storage memory, the address of the other packet, and writing, to the pointer memory, an updated pointer for the link list; and forwarding, by the fabric component, the other packet to the recipient component.