Patent attributes
Some embodiments provide a method for a traffic management unit of a network forwarding integrated circuit (IC). The traffic management unit includes multiple queues for storing packets. Each stored packet is (i) received by the traffic management unit from one of multiple ingress packet processing pipelines and (ii) for processing by an egress packet processing pipeline after being released from the queue storing the packet. The method determines that a particular one of the queues has crossed a threshold amount of stored packet data. The method provides queue state data including an identifier of the particular queue and a current amount of data stored in the particular queue to at least a subset of the multiple ingress pipelines. The ingress pipelines use the provided data to process subsequent packets.
