Mailbox switch: a scalable two-stage switch architecture for conflict resolution of ordered packets

Abstract-- Traditionally, conflict resolution in an inputbuffered switch is solved by finding a matching between inputs and outputs per time slot. To do this, a switch not only needs to gather the information of the virtual output queues at the inputs, but also uses the gathered information to compute a matching. As such, both the communication overhead and the computation overhead make it difficult to scale. Recent works on the two-stage switch architecture in [6], [7], [12], [8] showed that conflict resolution can be easily solved over time and space without communication and computation overhead. However, the main problem of such a two-stage switch architecture is that packets might be out of sequence. The main objective of this paper is to propose a scalable solution, called the mailbox switch, that solves the out-of-sequence problem in the two-stage switch architecture. The key idea of the mailbox switch is to use a set of symmetric connection patterns to create a feedback path fo...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2008
• Where: TCOM
• Authors: Cheng-Shang Chang, Duan-Shin Lee, Ying-Ju Shih, Chao-Lin Yu
• Keywords: Conflict Resolution, Mailbox Switch, TCOM 2008, Two-stage Switch Architecture