Gigabit-per-second ATM packet switching with the growable switch architecture

The issue of gigabit ATM packet switching, which has potential applications in emerging B-ISDN as well as in the gigabit testbed experiments, is discussed. The authors use the theory of a growable switch architecture consisting of a column of small output packet switch modules preceded by a memoryless cell distribution network. This architecture permits modular growth with the best possible (output-queuing) delay-throughput performance for arbitrary traffic distributions. An optical star-coupler-based arrangement for the cell distribution network is proposed