Abstract: A network device includes a receiver component that generates flow control information. The network device also includes a transmitter component that receives a packet for forwarding to the receiver component, receives flow control data for the packet from the receiver component, and provides the packet and the flow control data for the packet to a fabric component. The fabric component performs a congestion management operation for the packet, and forwards the packet to the receiver component based on the flow control data and results of the congestion management operation.

Abstract: A method includes receiving packets from a network with a plurality of packet-forwarding engines (PFEs) of a router, wherein the plurality of PFEs are interconnected by a switch fabric, determining an egress one of the PFEs for each of the packets, and forming fixed-sized fabric cells that share data associated with the packets that are destined for the same egress PFE while preventing packets destined for different egress PFEs to share any of the fabric cells. The fabric cells are transmitted through the switch fabric to communicate the packets to the egress PFEs.

Abstract: A network device includes a receiver component that generates flow control information. The network device also includes a transmitter component that receives a packet for forwarding to the receiver component, receives flow control data for the packet from the receiver component, and provides the packet and the flow control data for the packet to a fabric component. The fabric component performs a congestion management operation for the packet, and forwards the packet to the receiver component based on the flow control data and results of the congestion management operation.

Abstract: A computer architecture for avoiding a deadlock condition in an interconnection network comprises a messaging buffer having a size pre-calculated to temporarily store outgoing messages from a node. Messages are classified according to their service requirements and messaging protocols, and reserved quotas in the messaging buffer are allocated for different types of messages. The allocations of the reserved quotas are controlled by a mechanism that, to prevent overflow, limits the maximum number of messages that can be outstanding at any time. The messaging buffer is sized large enough to guarantee that a node is always able to service incoming messages, thereby avoiding deadlock and facilitating forward progress in communications. The buffer may be bypassed to improve system performance when the buffer is empty or when data in the buffer is corrupted.