| 摘要 |
A switching device comprising a plurality of ingress ports and egress ports, an ingress arbiter for selecting data packets from at least one buffer as candidate data packets for forwarding to an egress port, and an ingress scheduler for scheduling transmission of selected ones of the candidate data packets to destination egress ports. Aspects of the invention include the switching device arranged to determine a first time at which a first cell of a selected data packet selected by an ingress arbiter is to be forwarded to one of the egress ports, determine a further time at which a further cell of a selected data packet is to be forwarded to one of the egress ports (i.e. a ingress scheduler), forward the cells at the determined times. This invention provides a switching device which is arranged to determine both a first time at which a first cell should be forwarded and at least one further time at which a further cell should be forwarded. In this way a single scheduling operation is provided which allows times at which a plurality of cells are to be forwarded to be determined. It allows a single decision to be made relating to when all cells making up a particular data packet should be forwarded. |
