Patent ID: 7907606

Claim:
A multi-plane cell switch fabric system comprising: a plurality of distributing parts as inputs of the multi-plane cell switch fabric system; a plurality of alignment parts as outputs of the multi-plane cell switch fabric system; and a plurality of exchange parts to respectively and asynchronously perform data exchange from the distributing parts to the alignment parts, wherein each distributing part includes: a mechanism that divides an inputted variable length packet into fixed length cells, adds a head to a packet start cell, adds a tail to a packet end cell, and adds, to all the cells, transmission source identifiers to indicate its own distributing part and destination information indicating one or a plurality of alignment parts as destinations in the form of a destination bitmap, the bits of the destination bitmap corresponding respectively to the alignment parts, and each bit indicating that a cell is transmitted to the alignment part corresponding to the bit if the bit value is 1 and the cell is not transmitted to the alignment part corresponding to the bit if the bit value is 0; a mechanism of managing serial numbers that manages serial numbers indicating a sequence of cells for each of three kinds of flows for each of a plurality of combinations of two destinations, the three kinds of flows being defined for each of the combinations of the two destinations by three kinds of combination patterns of 01, 10 and 11 among combination patterns of the two bits of the destination bitmap; a mechanism that combines two bits by two bits of the destination bitmap, refers to the mechanism of managing serial numbers to add the one or the plurality of serial numbers corresponding to the flows defined by the combination of the two destinations and the combination pattern of the two bits to the cell; and a mechanism that distributes and outputs the cells to the plurality of exchange parts, further wherein the alignment part includes: a mechanism that classifies the received cells for the respective distributing parts of the transmission sources in accordance with the transmission source identifiers of the cells received through the plurality of exchange parts; a mechanism of aligning that refers to the destination bitmap, determines, based on the combination pattern of two bits including a bit corresponding to its own alignment part, whether a flow is a first flow of the combination pattern of 01 or 10 or a second flow of the combination pattern of 11, and aligns the cells in accordance with the serial numbers added to the cells for each of the first flow and the second flow; aligned queues that store the aligned cells in sequence for the respective distributing parts and the respective flows, and a mechanism that selects the aligned queue storing the packet end cell among the aligned queues, takes out cells from the packet start cell to the packet end cell, restores the packet, and outputs the packet.