Implementation issues for very-large-capacity ATM switching fabrics optically intra-connected

Hardware design and implementation issues associated with very-large-capacity asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) switching fabrics having terabit/second throughputs are discussed. The fabrics are based on the rerouting network, whose interconnection architecture is transformed into a sophisticated representation suitable for system partitioning and LSI implementation. The board-to-board interconnection bottleneck is removed by multigigabit/second optical interconnections. A high-speed switching LSI circuit has been fabricated and 2.8-Gb/s optical interconnect modules have been designed to show the feasibility of the proposed fabrics.<>