Abstract: A segmentation and reassembly processor (10) is disclosed for use in interfacing a group of time-division multiplexed lines (25) to a cell-based communication environment (20). The SAR uses a bit-table calendar (100) to schedule cells to be sent to the cell-based network. A cell service decision circuit (50) reads frame events from a frame advanced FIFO (40) and signals a cell builder (60) to assemble cells of data from a frame buffer (70) for transmission to a cell based output (50).

Abstract: An ATM switching system architecture of a switch fabric-type is built of, a plurality of ATM switch element circuits and routing table circuits for each physical connection to/from the switch fabric. A shared pool of memory is employed to eliminate the need to provide memory at every crosspoint. Each routing table maintains a marked interrupt linked list for storing information about which ones of its virtual channels are experiencing congestion. This linked list is available to a processor in the external workstation to alert the processor when a congestion condition exists in one of the virtual channels. The switch element circuit typically has up to eight 4-bit-wide nibble inputs and eight 4-bit-wide nibble outputs and is capable of connecting cells received at any of its inputs to any of its outputs, based on the information in a routing tag uniquely associated with each cell.