Multi-chip multicast schedulers in input-queued switches

Multi-chip scheduler implementation in IQ switches are suited to reduce the hardware complexity in very large, high-speed, switches. However, this implies introducing a RTTs (Round Trip Time) among input and output selectors used to determine a matching due to inter-chip latency. This delay requires modifications to scheduling algorithms to allow a fully distributed implementation while keeping good performance. We propose a novel multicast scheduler, named IMRR, an extension of a previously proposed multicast scheduling algorithm named mRRM, making it suitable to a multi-chip implementation, and examine its performance by simulation.