ATM switching architectures for wafer-scale integration

This paper proposes the use of wafer-scale integration (WSI) technology for ATM switching systems and presents two different switching architectures specifically designed for WSI. WSI is particularly useful for switching networks since the interconnection lengths are minimized when the entire network is laid out on a single semiconductor wafer. We propose a defect-tolerant multipath buffered crossbar (MBC) with an expandable structure which can easily be scaled up or down according to the choice of wafer size. We also design an ATM-based Manhattan-street network (MSN) as an alternative architecture, suitable for wafer-scale implementation. We compare the two architectures from different standpoints such as performance, defect-tolerance, delay, practicality, testability, complexity, yield, and area.