Multi-queue quality of service communication device

A peripheral device comprising:

• a plurality of peripheral buffers to store data cells received from a transmission medium, each peripheral buffer corresponding with a one of a plurality of host buffer queues maintained in a system memory of a host processing system, the host buffer queues being accessible by a CPU in the host processing system;
• and
• logic to transmit one or more data cells stored in a peripheral buffer to the host buffer queues upon detection that the peripheral buffer is full.

A method of transmitting data on a medium, the method comprising:

• maintaining a plurality of buffers in a system memory of a host processing system, the host processing system comprising a CPU capable of accessing the buffers, each buffer comprising one or more data cells and one or more of the buffers being associated with a quality of service;
• and
• at a peripheral device coupled to the host processing system, scheduling the transmission of data cells through the medium based upon a quality of service associated with at least one of the buffers in the system memory.

An apparatus comprising:

• a host processing system comprising a system memory and a CPU, the system memory comprising a plurality of host buffers accessible by the CPU, each of the host buffers comprising one or more data cells and at least one of the buffers being associated with a quality of service;
• and
• a peripheral device coupled to the host processing system, the peripheral device comprising logic to schedule transmission of data cells from the host buffers based upon a quality of service associated with at least one of the host buffers.

A peripheral device comprising:

• logic to initiate a direct memory access transaction with a system memory of a host processing system to receive data cells, each data cell having a destination associated with one of a plurality of virtual channels;
• and
• logic to order the data cells for transmission in a medium based upon a quality of service associated with at least one of the virtual channels.