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.
Type:
Grant
Filed:
May 11, 1995
Date of Patent:
September 17, 1996
Assignees:
Network Synthesis, Inc., Integrated Telecom Technology, Inc.