Architectural Overview

Descriptors store the following information about the buffers:

The physical address

The length

Status and command information about the referenced buffer

Descriptors contain an end-of-packet field that indicates the last buffer for a packet. Descriptors also contain packet-specific information indicating the type of packet, and specific operations to perform in the context of transmitting a packet, such as those for VLAN or checksum offload.

Section 3 provides detailed information about descriptor structure and operation in the context of packet transmission and reception.

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Software Developer’s Manual

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Intel Intel Gigabit Ethernet Controllers, PCI-X manual Architectural Overview