System and method for hierarchical switching

Abstract

A system and method have been provided for hierarchically arbitrating in a broadband information switching network. The method promotes the fair and efficient distribution of information packets across the switch fabric that ultimately permits the switch to maximally match information packets to switch output addresses, at faster rates and higher throughput. The method comprises: accepting variably sized information packets at a plurality of switch inputs, that address a plurality of switch outputs; at each switch input, queuing the information packets into a plurality of queues; parsing the information packets into units of one cell; simultaneously arbitrating between each switch output and a plurality of available switch inputs, where an available input is defined to have at least one queue with an information packet addressing that particular switch output; selecting a queue; locking the link between switch inputs and switch outputs; and, transferring information packets across the links in units of one cell per master decision cycle.