A switch is provided, which can receive a data communication at an edge of a network. The network may be made up of a plurality of switches. The switch may generate a flow channel based upon an identified source and destination for the data communication. The data communication can be routed across the plurality of switches based on minimizing a number of hops between a subset of the plurality of switches and in accordance with the flow channel.

A network interface controller (NIC) capable of efficient packet injection into an output buffer is provided. The NIC can be equipped with an output buffer, a plurality of injectors, a prioritization logic block, and a selection logic block. The plurality of injectors can share the output buffer. The prioritization logic block can determine a priority associated with a respective injector based on a high watermark and a low watermark associated with the injector. The selection logic block can then determine, from the plurality of injectors, a subset of injectors associated with a buffer class and determine whether the subset of injectors includes a high-priority injector. Upon identifying a high-priority injector in the subset of injectors, the selection logic block can select the high-priority injector for injecting a packet in the output buffer.

Methods and systems are provided to facilitate network egress fairness between applications. At an egress port of a network, an arbitrator can provide fairness-based traffic shaping to data associated with applications. The desired fairness-based traffic shaping can be provided based on bandwidth, traffic classes, or other parameters. Consequently, the egress link’s bandwidth can be allocated with fairness among the applications.

A switch architecture for a data-driven intelligent networking system is provided. The system can accommodate dynamic traffic with fast, effective congestion control. The system can maintain state information of individual packet flows, which can be set up or released dynamically based on injected data. Each flow can be provided with a flow-specific input queue upon arriving at a switch. Packets of a respective flow are acknowledged after reaching the egress point of the network, and the acknowledgement packets are sent back to the ingress point of the flow along the same data path. As a result, each switch can obtain state information of each flow and perform flow control on a per-flow basis.

A network interface controller (NIC) capable of efficient memory access is provided. The NIC can be equipped with an operation logic block, a signaling logic block, and a tracking logic block. The operation logic block can maintain an operation group associated with packets requesting an operation on a memory segment of a host device of the NIC. The signaling logic block can determine whether a packet associated with the operation group has arrived at or departed from the NIC. Furthermore, the tracking logic block can determine that a request for releasing the memory segment has been issued. The tracking logic block can then determine whether at least one packet associated with the operation group is under processing in the NIC. If no packet associated with the operation group is under processing in the NIC, tracking logic block can notify the host device that the memory segment can be released.

Systems and methods are provided for performing routing in a switch network or fabric. Switches can be configured in a hierarchical topology having a plurality of groups, where switches in a group are connected to one another, and groups are connected to other groups. Routing can be performed by maintaining per-group group load information. A packet can be routed between at least two groups using the per-group group load information to effect a set of routing decisions. The set of routing decisions can be biased towards or away one or more paths.

Systems and methods are provided for passing data amongst a plurality of switches having a plurality of links attached between the plurality of switches. At a switch, a plurality of load signals are received from a plurality of neighboring switches. Each of the plurality of load signals are made up of a set of values indicative of a load at each of the plurality of neighboring switches providing the load signal. Each value within the set of values provides an indication for each link of the plurality of links attached thereto as to whether the link is busy or quiet. Based upon the plurality of load signals, an output link for routing a received packet is selected, and the received packet is routed via the selected output link.

There are included a control unit configured to, when detecting that no high priority traffic frame arrives for a frame interval threshold or longer in the period that allows high priority traffic frames to be transmitted, release the period that allows high priority traffic frames to be transmitted and allocate the released period to the period that allows low priority traffic frames to be transmitted, a frame arrival time information acquisition unit configured to obtain information of frame arrival times of high priority traffic frames, a frame interval calculation unit configured to calculate, in accordance with the information of frame arrival times obtained by the frame arrival time information acquisition unit, frame intervals between frames of the high priority traffic frames input in chronological order, a frame interval threshold calculation unit configured to calculate a new frame interval threshold in accordance with the frame intervals, and a frame interval threshold configuration unit configured to change the frame interval threshold to the new frame interval threshold.

A network interface controller (NIC) capable of performing message passing interface (MPI) list matching is provided. The NIC can include a host interface, a network interface, and a hardware list-processing engine (LPE). The host interface can couple the NIC to a host device. The network interface can couple the NIC to a network. During operation, the LPE can receive a match request and perform MPI list matching based on the received match request.

A network interface controller (NIC) capable of facilitating efficient data request management is provided. The NIC can be equipped with a command queue, a message chopping unit (MCU), and a traffic management logic block. During operation, the command queue can store a command issued via a host interface. The MCU can then determine a type of the command and a length of a response of the command. If the command is a data request, the traffic management logic block can determine whether the length of the response is within a threshold. If the length exceeds the threshold, the traffic management logic block can pace the command such that the response is within the threshold.