A CONTROL ARCHITECTURE FOR A HOMOGENEOUS ROUTING STRUCTURE

摘要

A system for providing segmented control of a single, homogeneous routing structure, such as a switch fabric, includes application control elements th at are each responsive to embedded signal status information for each of the input signa ls to the switch fabric. Within each of the application control elements, a configurab le arrangement of selectors and control logic is used to provide domain segment ed control of each of the separate switching functions for a particular applica tion. Each application control element performs an application specific address resolut ion function to resolve a single address of one of the input signals based on th e embedded signal status of each of the input signals. This single address is provided to the switch fabric so that the corresponding input signal can be selected at the switch fabric output. Because embedded signal status is provided locally at each se lection point within the application control element, the control functions for each of the separate switching functions are decoupled, and, as a result, each of the se parate switching functions can be independently controlled as a separate domain wit hin the application control element. The single, homogeneous switch fabric simultane ously supports multiple applications in parallel because each of the application c ontrol elements is used to control a separate output from the switch fabric. Becaus e of the one for one association between application control elements and switch fabr ic outputs, the switch fabric is effectively "channelized" whereby each channel of the switch fabric supports a separate application.