ATM architecture and switching element
US6151301A · kind A · utility
Assignee
Inventor
Key dates
| Filing date | Jul 16, 1996 |
| Grant date | Nov 21, 2000 |
| Priority date | — |
| Expiry date | Jul 16, 2016 |
Classification
- Technology area (CPC H)Electricity
- CPC primaryH04L2012/5684
- WIPO fieldDigital communication
- WIPO sectorElectrical engineering
Abstract
An ATM switching system architecture of a switch fabric-type is built of, a plurality of ATM switch element circuits and routing table circuits for each physical connection to/from the switch fabric. A shared pool of memory is employed to eliminate the need to provide memory at every crosspoint. Each routing table maintains a marked interrupt linked list for storing information about which ones of its virtual channels are experiencing congestion. This linked list is available to a processor in the external workstation to alert the processor when a congestion condition exists in one of the virtual channels. The switch element circuit typically has up to eight 4-bit-wide nibble inputs and eight 4-bit-wide nibble outputs and is capable of connecting cells received at any of its inputs to any of its outputs, based on the information in a routing tag uniquely associated with each cell.
Source: USPTO / EPO open patent data. Objective bibliographic and citation counts.