A network element includes at least one headroom buffer, and flow-control circuitry. The headroom buffer is configured for receiving and storing packets from a peer network element having at least two data sources, each headroom buffer serving multiple packets. The flow-control circuitry is configured to quantify a congestion severity measure, and, in response to detecting a congestion in the headroom buffer, to send to the peer network element pause-request signaling that instructs the peer network element to stop transmitting packets that (i) are associated with the congested headroom buffer and (ii) have priorities that are selected based on the congestion severity measure.

Control logic circuitry stores packets in a queue in an order in which the packets are received. A head entry of the queue corresponds to an oldest packet in the order. The control logic circuitry receives flow control information corresponding to multiple target devices including at least a first target device and a second target device. The control logic circuitry determines, using the flow control information, whether the oldest packet stored in the head entry can be transferred to the first target device, and in response to determining that the oldest packet stored in the head entry cannot be transferred to the first target device, i) selects an other entry with an other packet behind the head entry according to the order, and ii) transfers the other packet to the second target device prior to transferring the oldest packet in the head entry to the first target device.

A group of low-level FIFOs may be logically bound together to form a super-FIFO. The super-FIFO may treat each low-level FIFO as a storage location. The super-FIFO may enable a push to (or a pop from) every low-level FIFO, simultaneously. The super-FIFO may enable a virtual channel (VC) to use the super-FIFO, bypassing a VC FIFO for the VC, removing several cycles of latency otherwise needed for enqueuing and dequeuing messages in the VC FIFO. In addition, the super-FIFO may enable bypassing of an arbiter, further reducing latency by avoiding a penalty of the arbiter.

Systems and methods of performing traffic shaping in a network device are provided. A network interface driver of the network device can store descriptors associated with packets received from multiple streams in a transmission queue in a first order. The network interface driver can transfer the descriptors to a traffic shaping module. In response to determining that a packet from a first stream, among the received packets, has been successfully transmitted by a network card, the network interface driver can communicate a packet transmission completion message corresponding to the packet to a software application that has awaited receipt of a packet transmission completion message before forwarding additional data packets from the first stream to the network interface driver. The network interface driver can communicate packet transmission completion messages corresponding to the packets received from the multiple streams to the software application in a second order, different from the first order.

In some embodiments, an apparatus includes a switch fabric having at least a first switch stage and a second switch stage, an edge device operatively coupled to the switch fabric and a management module. The edge device is configured to send a first portion of a data stream to the switch fabric such that the first portion of the data stream is received at a queue of the second switch stage of the switch fabric via the first switch stage of the switch fabric. The management module is configured to send a flow control signal configured to trigger the edge device to suspend transmission of a second portion of the data stream when a congestion level of the queue of the second switch stage of the switch fabric satisfies a condition in response to the first portion of the data stream being received at the queue.

A method for communication. The method includes receiving or determining an input data stream; propagating the input data stream through a plurality of consecutive input processing stages; and transmitting a plurality of output data streams provided at the output section via a plurality of communication channels.

In some embodiments, a method receives a packet for a flow associated with a workload. Based on an indicator for the flow, the method determines whether the flow corresponds to one of an elephant flow or a mice flow. Only when the flow is determined to correspond to an elephant flow, the method enables a hardware acceleration operation on the packet. The hardware acceleration operation may include hardware operation offload, receive side scaling, and workload migration.

A communication system according an embodiment includes one or more hardware processors. The one or more hardware processors calculate indicators used to detect presence of abnormality caused by a situation in which a size of a message is larger than a maximum allowable size of a queue, the indicators being calculated based on gate control information including a plurality of entries each of which indicates gate states corresponding to a plurality of queues.

A network element (16) includes ingress optics (22) configured to receive a client signal; egress optics (30) configured to transmit packets over one or more Ethernet links (20) in a network (12); circuitry (26, 28) interconnecting the ingress optics (22) and the egress optics (30), wherein the circuitry is configured to segment an Optical Transport Network (OTN) signal from the client signal into one or more flows; and provide the one or more flows to the egress optics for transmission over the one or more of Ethernet links (20) to a second network element (18) that is configured to provide the one or more flows into the OTN signal.

A method of a memory device, a storage system, and a memory device are provided. The method includes receiving a set of entries, where the set of entries includes a first entry from a source queue and addressed to a first destination and a second entry addressed to a second destination, determining to add a third entry associated with the first entry and addressed to the first destination to the set of entries, selecting one of the first entry and the third entry as a restock entry and the other of the first entry and the third entry as a pass-through entry, sending the restock entry to the source queue, and sending the second entry and the pass-through entry to a serial link connected to the first destination and the second destination.