A scalable multicast ATM switch using link sharing and prioritized link reservation

In this paper, we present a novel design of a large-scale multicast ATM switch. We first propose a basic switch architecture, where switch inputs and outputs are grouped into small modules called input shared blocks (ISB) and output shared blocks (OSB). Link sharing with round robin (RR) cell scheduling solves output contention and eliminates the speedup requirement for the central switch fabric. To support non-uniform traffic, an enhanced switch architecture with a round robin prioritized output link reservation algorithm (RR+POLR) is further introduced. Both RR and RR+POLR algorithms use a group mapping scheme and distribute input cells' contention resolution to every ISB. Scheduling complexity is dramatically reduced. Simulations for a 256/spl times/256 switch demonstrate an improved performance under non-uniform traffic.