MVTX2601
Data Sheet
27
Zarlink Semiconductor Inc.
expense of minimum bandwidth or maximum delay assurances. In addition, these “downgraded” frames may only
use the shared pool or the per-source reserved pool in the FDB; frames from flow control enabled sources may not
use reserved FDB slots for the highest six classes (P2-P7).
The MVTX2601 does provide a system-wide option of permitting normal QoS scheduling (and buffer use) for
frames originating from flow control enabled ports. When this programmable option is active, it is possible that
some packets may be dropped even though flow control is on. The reason is that intelligent packet dropping is a
major component of the MVTX2601’s approach to ensuring bounded delay and minimum bandwidth for high priority
flows.
7.8.1 Unicast Flow Control
For unicast frames, flow control is triggered by source port resource availability. Recall that the MVTX2601’s buffer
management scheme allocates a reserved number of FDB slots for each source port. If a programmed number of a
source port’s reserved FDB slots have been used then flow control Xoff is triggered.
Xon is triggered when a port is currently being flow controlled and all of that port’s reserved FDB slots have been
released.
Note that the MVTX2601’s per-source-port FDB reservations assure that a source port that sends a single frame to
a congested destination will not be flow controlled.
7.8.2 Multicast Flow Control
In unmanaged mode, flow control for multicast frames is triggered by a global buffer counter. When the system
exceeds a programmable threshold of multicast packets, Xoff is triggered. Xon is triggered when the system returns
below this threshold.
In addition, each source port has a 23-bit port map recording which port or ports of the multicast frame’s fanout
were congested at the time Xoff was triggered. All ports are continuously monitored for congestion and a port is
identified as uncongested when its queue occupancy falls below a fixed threshold. When all those ports that were
originally marked as congested in the port map have become uncongested, then Xon is triggered and the 23-bit
vector is reset to zero.
7.9 Mapping to IETF Diffserv Classes
For 10/100 Mbps ports, the classes of Table 6 are merged in pairs—one class corresponding to NM+EF, two AF
classes and a single BE class.
Table 8 - Mapping between MVTX2601 and IETF Diffserv Classes for 10/100 Ports
VTX
P3
P2
P1
P0
IETF
NM+EF
AF0
AF1
BE0