Multi-slice network processor

A multi-slice network processor system comprising:

• a plurality of parallel processing slices, each processing slice comprising a lookup processing module and access to a storage sub-system, the storage sub-system including a memory, the memory storing at least one group of cells of a packet in a buffer;
• and a buffer manager, the buffer manager maintaining a buffer correlation data structure for correlating one or more buffers to the packet, wherein the buffer correlation data structure is a linked list of buffer identifiers, the buffer correlation data structure being stored in the memory;
• a network data distribution and aggregation module for segmenting a packet received from a network into one or more packet slices, the network data distribution and aggregation module having a communication interface to each of the processing slices for communicating each packet slice;
• each of the plurality of slices having a channel communication interface with the network interface over which each packet slice is directed to a destination processing slice across the network interface;
• and
• a queuing module having an enqueuing communication interface and a de-queuing communication interface with each of the processing slices, the queuing module controlling the enqueuing and dequeuing of each of the packet slices, and determining the destination processing slice based on load balancing criteria;
• wherein the queuing module is configured to maintain an independent set of upper bits of a sequence number for each communication flow;
• wherein the queuing module is configured to acquire a sequence number for a packet delivered from a slice;
• and
• wherein the queuing module is configured to increment the independent set of upper bits for a communication flow, concatenate the set of upper bits with a set of bits of the sequence number of the packet into an index, index into a re-sequencing buffer space of sufficient depth to cover a slice-to-slew case based on the index, and re-sequence the packet into its sequence order position responsive to detecting one of the processing slices delivering a packet with a sequence number that is smaller in value than sequence number for a packet immediately preceding the packet for the same slice.