International Business Machines Corporation

Abel Francois

Norbert Schumacher

Ronald Peter Luijten

Bernd Leppla

Apparatus and method of operating a crossbar switch () having a control logic, an output port scheduler (), n input ports (i, . . . , i) and m output ports (o, . . . , o), wherein information packets are routed from said n input ports to said m output ports, and wherein said output port scheduler () controls the sequence of packets output at said output ports (o, . . . , o). To ensure fairness regarding packet transfer/routing and the packet sequence, an input port number corresponding to the input port a new information packet is arriving at is stored in round-robin mode in a port number buffer (pnb). For output, said input port number is retrieved from said port number buffer (pnb) in round robin mode, too, and with this port number, address information regarding the packet is obtained from a control logic buffer of the crossbar switch ().

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Rueschlikon, Switzerland

Abel Francois