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:
Apr. 30, 2002
Filed:
Dec. 17, 1998
Ernst August Munter, Kanata, CA;
Chris W. L. Hobbs, Ottawa, CA;
Nortel Networks Limited, St. Laurent, CA;
Abstract
A switch interface connected between a fiber optic cable and a switching fabric includes a line interface block, a fabric interface block, and ingress and egress data transfer blocks coupled independently between the line interface and fabric interface blocks. The ingress data transfer block has a cross-connection block connected to the line interface block, four memories, two processors, and the fabric interface block. With use of the cross-connection block, at any one time, one memory is coupled to the line interface block, one memory is coupled to one processor, one memory is coupled to the other processor, and the last memory is coupled to the fabric interface. Controlled by a memory control, the memories rotate which block each is coupled to, so that each memory is coupled to every block within a single cycle. Therefore, data information units traversing the ingress data transfer block do not require to be transferred between memories during the processing stages. The egress data transfer block operates in a similar fashion.