Patent ID: 7603539

Claim:
A data flow unit in a network processor, comprising: a pre-enqueueing mechanism for storing a plurality of frame control blocks to be associated into a table control block to be written to a control store, each frame control block associated with a different packet of data received by the data flow unit and comprising a pointer to a memory location where the data of the packet is stored in a data store; and each table control block comprising an address to the next table control block in a queue of table control blocks; with each frame control block in a table control block being associated with the same flow queue; a post-dequeueing mechanism for storing a plurality of associated frame control blocks received from the control store, the associated frame control blocks from a table control block accessed from the control store; and a memory arbiter to receive a write instructions to copy a table control block comprising a group of associated frame control blocks from the pre-enqueueing area to the control store and to receive a read instructions to copy a table control block comprising a group of associated frame control blocks from the control store to the post-dequeueing area.