Packet Information Block and System Packet Operations

Abstract

Unlike C, packetC is based upon the presumption of underlying capabilities being provided by the operating system or generated by the compiler for a target platform. These include the management of packet handling functionality including receipt, buffering, and transmission as well as an initial level of decoding and manipulation on transmission. In addition, parallel processing management and a base set of control plane functionality must be present for packetC applications to interact with. These functions may differ from one system to another; however, a base set of functionality must remain consistent. To provide a common interface, the language specification for packetC mandates a predefined base set of types that are passed as parameters to main() as well as a set of built-in methods and operators.