摘要 |
An apparatus is provided for processing a sequential stream of fixed length cells received via a slotted data transmission medium. The cells may be asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) cells. The apparatus utilizes a demultiplexer to create N (N=2,3,4 . . . ) sub-streams of cells from the input stream and to pass each sub-stream to one of N processing paths. Each of the processing paths is identical and they operate in parallel. The cell sub-streams are fed into the processing paths in a chronological, staggered manner where the time between one sub-stream being fed into its processing path and the next sub-stream being fed into another processing path is equal to the slot duration of the transmission medium. Finally, the apparatus utilizes a multiplexer to combine the processed sub-streams into an output stream which maintains both the sequential order of the cells and their arrangement in the slots of the slotted transmission medium. |