Appeal No. 2003-1240
Application No. 09/304,964
BACKGROUND
The invention is directed to a mechanism for allocating time slots for processing
queues from various ports of a communication switch. Claim 2 is reproduced below.
2. A multiport data communication system for switching data packets
between ports, the data communication system comprising:
a plurality of receive ports for receiving data packets,
a decision making engine responsive to the received data packets for
controlling transmission of the received data packets to at least one selected
transmit port,
the decision making engine including:
a plurality of queuing devices corresponding to the plurality of the receive
ports for queuing data blocks representing the data packets received by the
corresponding receive ports,
logic circuitry for receiving the data blocks from the plurality of queuing
devices in successive time slots to identify the at least one selected transmit port
for each data packet, and
a scheduler interacting with the plurality of queuing devices for
dynamically allocating each of the time slots to one of the plurality of queuing
devices in accordance with data traffic at the corresponding receive ports,
wherein the scheduler is configured to receive a request for a time slot
from a queuing device of the plurality of queuing devices when the queuing
device holds data to be processed by the logic circuitry.
The examiner relies on the following reference:
Wu et al. (Wu) 5,771,234 Jun. 23, 1998
(filed Dec. 6, 1995)
Claims 2-11 and 13-18 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 102 as being
anticipated by Wu.
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