Abstract: The present invention manages memory buffers in network device drivers in a flexible operating system (e.g., the Solaris operating system) that increase performance of the operating system at high throughputs with no detriment to the flexible nature of the operating system. Embodiments of the present invention reuse the (same) allocated and dma_binded memory buffers again and again, eliminating the repeated memory management of each data packet. In one embodiment, an rx-descriptor ring is treated as a true circular ring. A new data structure named rxbuffer_id is also defined along with a device-freemsg( ) function. In another embodiment, a device driver allocates and links a memory block (e.g., a rxbuffer_id data structure) with a message block at the time of allocating the message block for relocating incoming data packets. The memory block contains all the needed information for reuse of the message block.

Abstract: The present invention manages memory buffers in network device drivers in a flexible operating system (e.g., the Solaris operating system) that increase performance of the operating system at high throughputs with no detriment to the flexible nature of the operating system. Embodiments of the present invention reuse the (same) allocated and dma_binded memory buffers again and again, eliminating the repeated memory management of each data packet. In one embodiment, an rx-descriptor ring is treated as a true circular ring. A new data structure named rxbuffer_id is also defined along with a device-freemsg( ) function. In another embodiment, a device driver allocates and links a memory block (e.g., a rxbuffer_id data structure) with a message block at the time of allocating the message block for relocating incoming data packets. The memory block contains all the needed information for reuse of the message block.