| 摘要 |
A packet switch that scales gracefully from a capacity of a fraction of a terabit per second to thousands of terabits per second has edge nodes interconnected by independent switch units. The switch units are arranged in a matrix having multiple rows and multiple columns. A switch unit is implemented as an instantaneous space switch or as a latent space switch. Each edge node has a channel to a switch unit in each column and a channel from each switch unit in a selected column. A simple path traversing only one of the switch units may be established from each edge node to each other edge node. Where needed, a compound path concatenating at most two simple paths may be established for any edge-node pair. In a preferred configuration, the switch units connect at input to orthogonal sets of edge nodes. A distributed control system expedites connection-request processing. |
