A new architecture for packaging wideband communication equipment using a 3-D, orthogonal edge-to-edge topology

Describes a novel physical design for the packaging of communication equipment and shows its advantages as applied to a 256-port, 100-Mb/s Batcher-banyan facility switch. The design uses an orthogonal, edge-to-edge, 3-D topology to streamline the flow of interconnections between stages of the switch and to simplify and shorten lead lengths, thereby increasing the switch speed. A midplane circuit board to `swap´ network leads from orthogonal connectors to chip cards to provide chip-on-board mounting and fanout to the connectors is described. It is concluded that the electrical performance of this structure should support switches operating at speeds well in excess of 200 Mb/s