Patent ID: 7925816

Claim:
An apparatus, comprising: multiple switch chips that are coupled together and are configured to collectively function as a switch, wherein the multiple switch chips are configured to communicate with each other using proximity communication; wherein each switch chip is coupled to a subset of a set of inputs to the switch and wherein each switch chip is coupled to a subset of a set of outputs from the switch; and a transferring mechanism in each switch chip configured to receive cells from the subset of the set of inputs and to selectively transfer each of the cells to at least one output of the subset of the set of outputs coupled to the switch chip or of the subset of the set of outputs coupled to the other switch chips; a plurality of buffers in each switch chip, each buffer being coupled between the subset of inputs on a corresponding switch chip and a corresponding output, so that the buffer is exclusively shared among a subset of inputs coupled to a respective switch chip, wherein each output is coupled to a plurality of buffers, and wherein each of the buffers coupled to an output is coupled to a different subset of the set of the inputs to the switch; wherein the total number of buffers in the multiple switch chips equals the product of the number of outputs coupled to the switch and the number of switch chips.