APPARATUS AND METHOD FOR A FAULT-TOLERANT SCALABLE SWITCH FABRIC WITH QUALITY-OF-SERVICE (QOS) SUPPORT

• US 20090201923A1
• Filed: 02/09/2009
• Published: 08/13/2009
• Est. Priority Date: 11/27/2001
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Tellabs San Jose, Inc. (Infinera Corp.)
• Original Assignee: Tellabs San Jose, Inc. (Infinera Corp.)
• Inventors: HALABI, MITRI I., PARVIN, SHAHAM, LEHAVOT, AMIR, MENON, RAGHAVAN, ZHENG, XIAOYANG, ISSA, MOHAMMAD K., GRISWOLD, MARK D., GOLDSTEIN, ADAM
• Granted Patent: US 8,165,112 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 370/388
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 12/40058 Isochronous transmission
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 12/6418 Hybrid transport

Abstract

Embodiments of the present invention relate to portions of a switch fabric having a single logical stage and at least one physical stage. In addition, the data paths and the control paths of the switch fabric can be decoupled thereby allowing additional processing to be performed than would otherwise be the case with control rates that matched the high data rates. In other words, data cells received on high speed links can be spread over many lower speed links; consequently, the data cells can transit the switch fabric at that high speed while the control information associated with the data can be processed at that lower speed. Because the control information can be processed at a lower speed (associated with the control path), the control information can be processed over a greater period of time.

Claims

1. An apparatus for routing within a switch fabric, comprising:

a first arbitration component, the first arbitration component configured to receive a first plurality of request-to-sends (RTSs) from a first plurality of fabric gateways including a first fabric gateway, the first arbitration component configured to arbitrate the first plurality of RTSs according to an arbitration scheme; and

a second arbitration component, the second arbitration component configured to receive a second plurality of request-to-sends (RTSs) from a first plurality of fabric gateways including the first fabric gateway, the first arbitration component configured to arbitrate the second plurality of RTSs according to the arbitration scheme.

2-82. -82. (canceled)