Patent ID: 6999453

Claim:
A system for distributed control of a communication switch, including a switch fabric and plurality of switch satellites, in which the switch satellites include interfaces to external communication channels and interfaces to the switch fabric, and maintain one or more ingress queues for ingress communications from the external communication channels to the switch fabric, and one or more egress queues for egress communications from the switch fabric to the external communication channels, comprising: a plurality of arbitration logic units coupled with respective switch satellites, a particular arbitration logic unit in the plurality of arbitration logic units including logic to control an arbitration cycle for a given switch cycle, including a first stage in which performance parameters are gathered from other arbitration logic units in the plurality, the performance parameters indicating a status of the one or more egress queues maintained in the switch satellites coupled with the respective arbitration logic units, a second stage in which bid data are propagated among the plurality, the bid data including a set of bids for use of egress queues during the switch cycle, the bids in the set including a destination identifier indicating a destination egress queue in one of the plurality of switch satellites, and a pressure parameter indicating a result of a combination of the performance parameter of the destination egress queue with a condition of a source ingress queue, a third stage in which a connection map based on the bid data gathered from the plurality of arbitration units is computed, and a fourth stage in which the switch fabric is configured, based upon the connection map.