Patent ID: 7653053

Claim:
A method of switching a plurality of parallel input Time Division Multiplexing (TDM) streams to a plurality of parallel output TDM streams, each parallel input TDM stream having an input data rate not greater than a maximum data rate, the method comprising the steps of: a. grouping the parallel input TDM streams into a plurality of subsets, the parallel input TDM streams in each subset having a common input data rate associated with the subset, at least one subset having an input rate less than the maximum data rate and less than the input data rate of at least one other parallel input stream; b. multiplexing, by a data selector, the parallel input TDM streams within each subset having an input data rate less than the maximum data rate to generate a respective grouped input stream; c. storing within a data memory data from each grouped input stream in a separate row of the data memory in the order in which the data occurs within the grouped input stream; d. determining a mapping between the parallel input TDM streams and the parallel output TDM streams; e. generating by a switching state machine a plurality of grouped output streams from the mapping such that each grouped output stream includes data from at least one parallel input TDM stream; and f. demultiplexing, by an output holding register, each grouped output stream which includes data from at least two parallel input TDM streams to generate a respective plurality of parallel output TDM streams.