Applied Micro Circuits Corporation

Jianfeng Shi

Sushil Kumar Singh

Kenneth Yun

Kirk Alvin Miller

George Bendak

Viet Linh Do

Kevin Warren James

Michael Hellmer

Prayag Bhanubhai Patel

David Thomas Dougherty

John Calvin Leung

Ayoob Eusoof Dooply

Eli James Aubrey Fernald

A system and method are provided for resynchronizing backplane link management credit counters in a packet communications switch fabric. The method comprises: at an input port card ingress port, accepting information packets including cells and cell headers with destination information; modifying the destination information in the received cell headers; routing information packets between the input port card and output port cards on backplane data links through an intervening crossbar; at the input port card, maintaining a credit counter for each output port card channel; decrementing the counter in response to transmitting cells from the input port card; generating credits in response to transmitting cells from an output port card channel; sending the generated credits to increment the counter, using the modified destination information; and, using the generated credit flow to resynchronize the credit counter.

System and method for synchronizing switch fabric backplane link management credit counters

A credit-based system and method are provided for managing backplane traffic flow in a packet communications switch fabric. The method comprises: accepting information packets including cells and cell headers with destination information; modifying the destination information in the received cell headers; routing information packets between an input port card and output port cards on backplane data links through an intervening crossbar; at the input port card, maintaining a credit counter for each output port card channel; decrementing the counter in response to transmitting cells from the input port card; generating credits in response to transmitting cells from an output port card channel; and, using modified destination information, sending the generated credits to increment the counter. In some aspects, modifying the destination information in the received packet headers includes: extracting the output port card termination from the card field; and, inserting the input port card source in the card field.

Switch fabric backplane flow management using credit-based flow control

A system and method are provided for tolerating data line faults in a packet communications network. The method comprises: serially transmitting information packets from at least one traffic manager (TM); at a switch fabric, accepting information packets at a plurality of ingress ports, the information packets addressing destination port card egress ports; selectively connecting port card ingress ports to port card egress ports; serially supplying information packets from a plurality of port card egress ports; sensing a connection fault between the switch fabric and the TM; and, in response to sensing the fault, reselecting connections between the switch fabric port card ports and the TM. Some aspects comprise: an ingress memory subsystem (iMS) receiving cells on an ingress port exceeding an error threshold. Then, reselecting connections between the port card ports and the TM includes the iMS sending a message to the iTM identifying the faulty ingress connection.

System and method for tolerating data link faults in communications with a switch fabric

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Encinitas, CA, United States of America

Jianfeng Shi