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MT90880/1/2/3
Data Sheet
58
Zarlink Semiconductor Inc.
Figure 26 - Packet Classification Process
Once a successful match is established, the characteristics of each traffic class may be determined by a
look-up process. If the matched class contains TDM traffic, the context descriptor is retrieved from a
pre-determined position. This indicates the identity of the context to which the packet belongs, which is used to
place the packet into the appropriate queue. More than one traffic class can be designated as TDM traffic,
allowing the context descriptor to be retrieved from a different position for each class. This may be useful when
the MT9088x device received traffic from multiple sources, each of which may be using a different protocol
stack.
CPU traffic can be allocated to one of four queues waiting for DMA transfer up to the host. Therefore the
classifier can be used to pre-sort the traffic destined for the CPU. This can be used either to direct traffic to
different destination devices (e.g. packets for the control CPU, and packets for a DSP or local resource pool), or
to separate high priority control traffic from lower priority maintenance information.
Look-up Stage
Comparison Stage
Mask Stage
Mask 2
Mask 3
Mask 1
Mask 4
Pattern 2
Pattern 3
Pattern 1
Pattern 4
Comparator
Comparator
Comparator
Comparator
Priority Encoder
Masked
Header
Masked
Header
Masked
Header
Masked
Header
Comparison
result 1
Comparison
result 4
Comparison
result 3
Comparison
result 2
Payload
FCS
Header
Incoming packet for classification
Pattern
Match Result
Succesful
Match
TDM traffic
CPU Traffic
Look-up Context
Descriptor
Look up CPU queue
Forward to
CPU queue 0
Traffic
Class
N
Y