Patent ID: 7567556

Claim:
A circulating switch comprising: an array of temporal cyclical rotators; a plurality of switch modules, each switch module being a common-memory switch having a data memory logically divided into: a first section for storing a first set of data segments received from data sources; a second section for storing a second set of data segments destined for particular switch modules among said plurality of switch modules, said second section logically divided into a number of sub-sections, each sub-section of said number of sub-sections corresponding to one temporal cyclical rotator among said array of temporal cyclical rotators; and a third section for storing data segments directly destined for data sinks; wherein each temporal cyclical rotator of said array has a plurality of inlets and a plurality of outlets, where said plurality of inlets and said plurality of outlets are communicatively connected to said plurality of switch modules and where said each temporal cyclical rotator cyclically connects each switch module of said plurality of switch modules to each other switch module of said plurality of switch modules by cyclically connecting individual inlets among said plurality of inlets to individual outlets among said plurality of outlets.