Patent ID: 8085764

Claim:
A method of reducing power consumption in a time division multiplexing (TDM) egress selection memory switch having an ingress side with a plurality of ingress ports, an egress side with a plurality of egress ports, and fanout circuitry connecting the ingress side and the egress side, the method comprising: grouping the plurality of egress ports into at least two egress port groups; selecting and storing a given ingress grain delivered through the fanout circuitry for eventual output; and reducing average power consumption of the fanout circuitry by selectively propagating the ingress grain data to each said egress port group by disabling unselected grains and selectively overwriting bits in the disabled grains in the fanout circuitry with a constant value, the selected egress port group having at least one egress port for which the given ingress grain is selected for output.