A fast arbitration scheme for terabit packet switches

Input-output queued switches have been widely considered as the most feasible solution for large capacity packet switches and IP routers. The challenge is to develop a high speed and cost-effective arbitration scheme to maximize the switch throughput and delay performance for supporting multimedia services with various quality-of-service (QoS) requirements. In this paper, we propose a ping-pong arbitration (PPA) scheme for output contention resolution in input-output queued switches. The basic idea is to divide the inputs into groups and apply arbitration recursively. Our recursive arbiter is hierarchically structured, consisting of multiple small-size arbiters at each layer. The arbitration time of an n-input switch is proportional to log₄[₂/ⁿ] when we group every two inputs or every two input groups at each layer. We present a 256×256 terabit crossbar multicast packet switch using the PPA. The design shows that our scheme can reduce the arbitration time of the 256×256 switch to 11 gates delay, demonstrating the arbitration is no longer the bottleneck limiting the switch capacity