公开(公告)号：US10992404B2

公开(公告)日：2021-04-27

申请号：US14458139

申请日：2014-08-12

Applicant: Apple Inc.

Inventor： Ashley I. Butterworth ,  Girault W. Jones, Jr. ,  Matthew X. Mora

IPC: H04J3/16 ,  H04L12/861 ,  H04L12/875 ,  H04L12/751 ,  H04L12/873

Abstract: Methods and apparatus for efficiently servicing isochronous streams (such as media data streams) associated with a network. In one embodiment, an Isochronous Cycle Manager (ICM), receives multiple independent streams of packets that include isochronous packets arriving according to different time bases (e.g., where each stream has a different time base). The packets are sorted by the ICM into a buffering mechanism according to their required presentation time. Additionally the ICM calculates a launch time for each packet. The NIC transmits the packets from the queue according to an access scheme, such as a time division multiplexed (TDM) scheme where each of a plurality of cycles is subdivided into time slots. During appropriate time slots, the NIC transmits the packets in chronological order, as read out of the buffering mechanism.