| 摘要 |
Ethernet controller memory management systems and methods for memory management for an ethernet controller are provided which allocate blocks of memory based on the amount of data contained in the received ethernet frame. A linked list structure of frame descriptors is utilized for establishing the sequential blocks of allocated memory for data storage, however, the data pointers indicating the starting location of each sequential block of memory are dynamically updated through the use of a frame link detector circuit and methodology which establishes the correct pointer address in a next frame descriptor field based on adding a calculated length of the received data to an initial starting point memory address for the current frame descriptor memory block. Accordingly, the amount of memory allocated to reflect a respective frame descriptor for a particular received frame is limited to the necessary amount of memory to store the length of data received in the respective frame. Therefore, the prior art potential problem of a significant amount of unused memory may be overcome by the systems and methods of the present invention.
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