Implementation of ATLAS I:
a Single-Chip ATM Switch with Backpressure

Georgios Kornaros, Dionisios Pnevmatikatos, Panagiota Vatsolaki, Georgios Kalokerinos, Chara Xanthaki, Dimitrios Mavroidis, Dimitrios Serpanos, and Manolis Katevenis

Institute of Computer Science (ICS)
Foundation for Research and Technology -- Hellas (FORTH)
Science and Technology Park of Crete, P.O.Box 1385, Heraklion, Crete, GR 711 10 Greece

most authors are or were also with the
Department of Computer Science, University of Crete, Greece.

Proceedings of the IEEE Hot Interconnects VI Symposium,
Stanford University, California USA, 13-15 August 1998
© Copyright 1998 IEEE

ABSTRACT:

ATLAS I is a single-chip ATM switch with 10 Gb/s throughput, a shared buffer, 3 priority levels, multicasting, load monitoring, and optional credit-based flow control. This 6-million-transistor 0.35-micron CMOS chip is about to be taped out for fabrication. We present here the implementation of ATLAS I; we report on the design complexity and silicon cost of the chip and of the individual functions that it supports. Based on these metrics, we evaluate the architecture of the switch. The evaluation points in the direction of increasing the cell buffer size and dropping VP/VC translation, while other possible modifications are also discussed. The cost of credit support (10% in chip area and 4% in chip power) is minuscule compared to its benefits, i.e. compared to what alternative architectures have to pay in order to achieve comparable performance levels.

KEYWORDS: single-chip ATM switch, general-purpose building block for universal networking, credit-based flow control, backpressure, VLSI switch implementation cost & evaluation.

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Last updated: July 1998, by M. Katevenis.

© Copyright 1998 IEEE.
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