Backplane Interface Adapter with Error Control and Redundant Fabric

• US 20090290499A1
• Filed: 03/09/2009
• Published: 11/26/2009
• Est. Priority Date: 11/17/2000
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Avago Technologies International Sales Pte Limited (Broadcom, Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Foundry Networks Incorporated (Broadcom, Inc.)
• Inventors: Chang, Andrew, Patel, Ronak, Wong, Ming G., Wong, Yuen Fai, Lin, Yu-mei
• Granted Patent: US 7,948,872 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 370/244
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 45/74 Address processing for routing
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 47/50 Queue scheduling
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 47/6225 Fixed service order, e.g. Round Robin
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 49/153 ATM switching fabrics having parallel switch planes
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 49/1538 Cell slicing
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 49/25 Routing or path finding in a switch fabric
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 49/30 Peripheral units, e.g. input or output ports
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 49/3063 Pipelined operation
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 49/352 Gigabit ethernet switching [GBPS]
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 49/90 Buffering arrangements
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 49/901 using storage descriptor, e.g. read or write pointers

Abstract

A backplane interface adapter with error control and redundant fabric for a high-performance network switch. The error control may be provided by an administrative module that includes a level monitor, a stripe synchronization error detector, a flow controller, and a control character presence tracker. The redundant fabric transceiver of the backplane interface adapter improves the adapter'"'"'s ability to properly and consistently receive narrow input cells carrying packets of data and output wide striped cells to a switching fabric.

Claims

1-12. -12. (canceled)

13. A redundant switching system, comprising:

two switching blades, each switching blade having a plurality of cross points corresponding to respective stripes of serial data streams; and

at least one blade coupled to each switching blade through a backplane connection, wherein said at least one blade includes a plurality of redundant fabric transceivers which can switch traffic between the cross points on the two switching blades.

14. A redundant fabric transceiver coupled to a bus interface adapter comprising:

one or more first ports that communicate similar data in a substantially simultaneous fashion, wherein each of said one or more first ports is coupled to at least one switching fabric module;

a multiplexer that selects communication data from said similar data for transmission, for transmission wherein said similar data can include more than one version of said communication data;

a downlink transceiver that receives, conditions, and transmits said communication data; and

one or more second ports that receives said communication data once transmitted from said multiplexer, wherein said one or more second ports forwards said communication data to a bus interface adapter.

15. The redundant fabric transceiver of claim 14, further comprising:

an uplink transceiver that receives, conditions, and transmits said communication data, wherein said one or more second ports receives said communication data from said bus interface adapter, wherein said one or more second ports forwards said communications data to said uplink transceiver, wherein said uplink transceiver conditions and forwards said communication data to said multiplexer, wherein said multiplexer generates one or more similar data for forwarding to said one or more first ports.

16. The redundant fabric transceiver of claim 15, further comprising:

one or more first queues for buffering data, wherein said one or more queues are coupled to said multiplexer.

17. The redundant fabric transceiver of claim 15, further comprising:

one or more second queues for buffering data, wherein said one or more second queues are coupled to at least one of said downlink transceiver and said uplink transceiver.

18. The redundant fabric transceiver of claim 15, further comprising:

a register module that includes condition information that indicates operations for at least one of said downlink transceiver and said uplink transceiver, wherein said condition information includes configuration and parameter settings for received and transmitted data.

19. The redundant fabric transceiver of claim 15, wherein said one or more first ports are serializer/deserializers.

20. The redundant fabric transceiver of claim 15, wherein said one or more second ports are serializer/deserializers.

21. The redundant fabric transceiver of claim 15, wherein said downlink transceiver includes a receiver, a random access memory module, and a transmitter.

22. The redundant fabric transceiver of claim 15, wherein said uplink transceiver includes a receiver, a random access memory module, and a transmitter.

23. The redundant fabric transceiver of claim 15, wherein said one or more first ports are able to be individually inactivated in the event of an error condition affecting said one or more first ports.

24. The redundant fabric transceiver of claim 15, wherein said one or more first ports are able to be switched to without loss of data.