Round-robin selection with adaptable-size frame in a combined input-crosspoint buffered switch

Abstract

As an alternative to input-buffered switches, combined input-crosspoint buffered switches relax arbitration timing and provide high-performance switching for packet switches with high-speed ports. It has been shown that these switches, with one-cell crosspoint buffer and round-robin (RR) arbitration at input and output ports, provide 100% throughput under uniform traffic. However, under admissible traffic patterns with nonuniform distributions, only weight-based selection schemes are reported to provide high throughput. We propose an RR based arbitration scheme for a combined input-crosspoint buffered packet switch that provides nearly 100% throughput for several admissible traffic patterns, including uniform and unbalanced traffic, using one-cell crosspoint buffers. The presented scheme uses adaptable-size frames, so that the frame size adapts to the traffic pattern.