Patent ID: 6687246
Filing Date: 2004-02-03
Classification: H04L

Abstract:
A switch fabric, comprises:a pair of data switches each having a plurality of input ports and a plurality of output ports, the switches capable of switching any of its input ports to any of its output ports, each pair of data switches comprising: a plurality of virtual queues; input segment logic coupled to at least one bus, said input segment logic to determine to which virtual queue incoming data should be sent; output segment logic to select which virtual queue should be connected to an output port; and a distributed switching arrangement to provide a non-blocking cross-bar switching fabric arrangement capability over a series of byte sliced buses, the distributed switching arrangement coupling the virtual queues to the output segment logic through the non-blocking cross-bar switching arrangement, the non-blocking cross-bar switching fabric arrangement capability comprising a plurality of multiplexers coupled to the outputs of the plurality of the virtual queues to select ones of the virtual queues to feed to a second plurality of multiplexers that produce inputs to the output segment logic; said pair of data switches, having inputs coupled to a plurality of input buses so that a first byte of a first one of the buses is coupled to the first switch, and a last byte of the first bus is coupled to the second switch.