The design and comparison of two IPC control methods in an ATM switching control system

This paper proposes two types of inter-processor communication (IPC) control methods in an asynchronous transfer mode switching system. One is an indirect control method where the local CPU controls the main IPC functions. All the IPC messages are stored in the local memory and handled by the local software. The other is a direct control method in that the main CPU controls the overall IPC functions. All the IPC messages are transferred into the main memory through direct memory access and handled by the main control software. We describe the operations of each IPC control method. We also analyze and compare the performance of both methods.