Buffered Crossbar Based Parallel Packet Switch

Abstract

A parallel packet switch (PPS) provides huge aggregate bandwidth by combining the capacities of multiple switching fabrics. Most existing PPSs use output queued switches as the switching fabrics, which require speedup and result in high implementation cost. In this paper, we present a buffered crossbar based parallel packet switch (BCB- PPS), whose switching fabrics need no speedup. We propose the Batch-WF2Q algorithm to dispatch packets to the parallel switching fabrics, and leverage the sMUX algorithm in to schedule packet transmission for the switching fabrics. Such a design enables a simple round-robin algorithm to efficiently collect packets from the switching fabrics. In addition, our design requires no packet resequencing, and thus needs no buffers at either external or internal outputs. We show that BCB-PPS has tight delay guarantees and bounded buffer sizes. Finally, we present simulation data to verify the analytical results and to evaluate the performance of our design.