ATM-switching element design for 10 Gbit/sec/port data rate

ATM switches available today or in the near future have a port speed of 155 or 620 Mbit/s. The next step will be to increase the port speed by a factor of 4 up to 2.5 Gbit/s. However, the fiber optic networks being developed allow an even higher transmission rate and the key elements are switching elements operating at 10 Gbit/s per port, which can be effectively used in forming terabit switch fabrics. In this paper, we report our results on a very high speed 2×2 switching element capable of operating at 10 Gbit/s data rates for each input/output port. Such a switch operating at multi-gigahertz clock rates, minimizes hardware and the number of internal links in the switch fabric consisting of multiple switching elements. We also propose a model of a switch fabric based on the new switching element architecture. The circuit level implementation is described for speed critical operations, utilizing Vitesse GaAs-MESFET technology