A 160-Gb/s ATM switching system using an internal speed-up crossbar switch

A 160 Gb/s ATM switching system handling sixteen 10-Gb/s input lines is constructed by using an internal speed-up crossbar switch. The switch is structured around an input/output buffering switch architecture, high-speed bipolar devices and multichip module technology. The switch adopts a bufferless crossbar network realized with high-speed bipolar devices and cell buffers only on each input and output line. Using a separate architecture to link the bufferless routing network to the cell buffers, 20 Gb/s high-speed cell transmission can be easily realized in the crossbar network. In addition, a new high-speed arbitration algorithm using three bus lines on each output line, named the bi-directional arbiter, is adopted. The bi-directional arbiter is about 1.5 times faster than the conventional ring-arbiter and has the same fairness function. Using the switching system, a sub-tera-bit/s ATM switching system can be achieved in a significant step towards broadband ISDN.