Network packet receiving apparatus and method

An apparatus comprising:

• a plurality of packet queues each corresponding to a packet transmission channel and configured to receive a plurality of packets;
• a credit allocation circuit configured to calculate a packet amount of each of the packet queues, determine whether the packet amount exceeds an amount range of each of the packet queues and further control an available descriptor credit of each of the packet queues to be within a credit range;
• and
• a credit management circuit configured to point each of a plurality of public entries of a public link list to one of a plurality of descriptors each stored in one of a plurality of buffer entries of a single descriptor buffer;
• wherein the credit management circuit is further configured to receive a credit requesting command corresponding to the packet queues for controlling the packet queues to share the single descriptor buffer,
• wherein under the condition that the available descriptor credit is within the credit range, the credit management circuit assigns the descriptors to the packet queues by using the public entries, enabling a direct memory access (DMA) circuit to perform a DMA operation on the packets according to the descriptors assigned to the packet queues.