Specific data structure intended for the implementation of high level ISO standards: Associated algorithms and dedicated hardware

Abstract One specific advanced aspect of this work concerns at first the projet MC3 ∗ we are involved in: definition and validation of the architecture of a new ASIC data communication circuit intended for the high level ISO protocols Networks, Transport and Session. This paper describes the definition of the specific data structure, called PnPDU, which is used for the frame memory management in the implementaton of high level ISO protocols, especially when two or more of these protocols are to be implemented together on a data communication circuit and when the minimization of computational costs is an important working hypothesis. The second part of this paper is concentrated on the micro-architecture of the Transfer Machine which is dedicated, inside MC3, to the interface management and to the frame emission and reception: particularly, the scanning of the PnPDU data structure and the emission of the whole frame which are done by an intelligent DMA, are described. The last part of the paper shows how the validation of the data structure and the dedicated hardware is carried out.