A growable shared-buffer-based ATM switching fabric

In the paper a growable ATM or fast packet switching fabric architecture using shared buffer switching elements is proposed. The fabric has a two-sided structure and allows for the modular growth of its size from small to very large number of ports. The fabric is expanded by connecting additional basic fabrics to the existing structure by some interconnecting modules. The expansion process does not disturb the existing cabling. The architecture makes it also possible to adjust the system throughput. The hardware complexity of the new fabric is moderate and is discussed in the paper. Some important implementation issues such as the physical design and reliability are also presented in the paper.