The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Sep. 04, 1990
Filed:
Aug. 29, 1989
AT&T Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill, NJ (US);
Abstract
This invention is an inventive N input by L output interconnect fabric. In operation, packets comprising an information field and an address are received at the N inputs to the interconnect fabric, and the address in each packet is mapped to a group of outputs, rather than to any particular output. Each packet is then routed to any available one of the interconnect fabric outputs associated with the group to which the packet is mapped. If a number of packets destined for the same group simultaneously arrive at the interconnect fabric inputs and the group to which they are all destined does not comprise enough outputs to accept them, then all packets in excess of the number that the destined group can accept are simply discarded. The probability of lost jackets due to such discarded packets is acceptably small. In one exemplary embodiment, the invention can be utilized to build arbitrarily large packet switches.