Patent 7426604 was granted and assigned to Sun Microsystems on September, 2008 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
A buffer architecture enables linked lists to be used to administer virtual output queue buffering. The buffer has three random access memories (RAMs). A data RAM holds data. A free RAM holds a linked list of entries defining free space in the data RAM. Destination RAM holds a linked list of entries defining data in the data RAM to be forwarded to a destination.