Decentralized control of a multiple shared memory module ATM switch

In an earlier paper, the authors proposed an asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) switch (called the MSM switch) in which several shared memory modules were placed in parallel with every input and every output having access to every one of the switch modules. Here the effort is toward building distributed control schemes for the MSM switch to achieve the same performance. In the distributed control scheme the MSM switch has a set of module controllers instead of a centralized one that schedules each arriving packet and keeps track of all the packets stored in the switch. Each controller is associated with a module and keeps information about packets stored in its module. It is first shown that there exists a distributed scheduling algorithm that yields an optimal switch scheme. They then develop a decentralized control scheme which, with a batch processing technique and a ring connection of module controllers, is able to schedule arriving packets optimally