Parallel-Contention-Tolerant Crossbar Switches
Mow-Cheng Lee · 2014
The crossbar fabric is widely used as the interconnect of high-performance packet switches due to its low cost and scalability. In this paper, we propose a novel crossbar architecture, namely, the Parallel-Contention-Tolerant Crossbar (PCTC) switches. This architecture is an extension and improvement of Contention-Tolerant crossbar switches. In our architecture each input port of the switch operates independently and in parallel to solve output contentions by pipelining mechanisms without using central controlled scheduling or arbitrating algorithms. Therefore, it simplifies the implementation and reduces the building costs. We analyze the performance of PCTC switch, and prove that the lower bound of throughput is 63%. We also prove that 100% throughput can be achieved with internal speedup. We also analyze the performance of the architecture and validate the analysis by simulation results.