Multi-path Self-routing Switching Structure; by Interconnection of Multistage Sorting Concentrators

Several nonblocking packet switching architectures have been proposed for broadband network, such as shared bus, shared memory, crossbar matrix with combined input and output queuing, etc. Their topological demerit, such as bandwidth bottleneck and insufficient processing ability to schedule I/O matching, greatly limits their ability for large scale switching routers. This paper proposes and models a novel multi- path self-routing switching fabric by merging the bitonic sorters with the multistage interconnection network. This structure possesses the properties of complete distributing and self-routing, free of I/O matching scheduling algorithm, no internal buffer, no buffered delay and jitter, modeled with algebraic permuting group, as well as high modularity and recursive scalability. Mathematical analysis and simulations show this structure is suitable for building super large scale switching fabric to support QoS applications.