Patent ID: 8630286

Claim:
A switch, comprising: a plurality of ingress ports, said plurality of ingress ports receiving traffic from a corresponding first plurality of network devices that are coupled to said plurality of ingress ports via a respective first plurality of network communication cables; a plurality of egress ports, said plurality of egress ports transmitting traffic to a corresponding second plurality of network devices that are coupled to said plurality of egress ports via a respective second plurality of network communication cables; and a plurality of shared memory banks that couple said plurality of ingress ports to said plurality of egress ports, each of said plurality of shared memory banks having a main memory, wherein cache memory associated with a first of said plurality of shared memory banks is used to store multicast traffic, thereby enabling a read of unicast traffic stored in a main memory of said first of said plurality of shared memory banks in parallel with a read of multicast traffic stored in said cache memory associated with said first of said plurality of shared memory banks.