Patent ID: 7822589

Claim:
A method of simulating the operation of at least one switch fabric comprising a plurality of integrated circuits of a designated chip set, utilizing a software-based development tool, the method comprising the steps of: providing in the software-based development tool an interface for user control of configurable parameters of the switch fabric; and automatically generating a simulation configuration for the switch fabric based on current values of the configurable parameters; the simulation configuration being generated without requiring further user input; the simulation configuration specifying interconnections between the integrated circuits which satisfy the current values of the configurable parameters; wherein the configurable parameters of the switch fabric comprise one or more configurable parameters of each of the integrated circuits and configurable parameters of a base device for the designated chip set; wherein each integrated circuit of the designated chip set corresponds to a specified ingress device, a specified cross-connect device or a specified egress device; wherein the one or more configurable parameters of a given integrated circuit are determined by the correspondence of the given integrated circuit to the specified device; wherein the configurable parameters of the base device comprise a cell payload size, a chip version, a clock speed, a switching capacity, and a configuration type selected from a plurality of configuration types comprising a centralized configuration, a stackable configuration and a distributed configuration; and wherein the interface permits user selection of any one of the plurality of configuration types.