High-speed switching system with flexible protocol capability.

摘要

The invention provides a crosspoint switching system (30) comprising a plurality of switching planes for transferring data therethrough. The switching planes are comprised of two types, data planes (32) used only for transferring data between processors and at least one control/data plane (34) capable of transferring data and controlling crosspoints in the other data planes. The switching system is operable with two protocols, a message-switched mode in which only the control/data plane is used for transfer of data and a circuit-switched mode in which the control/data plane and the other data planes are used for transfer of data.