Switch Architecture (SWARC)

Abstract:

Interconnection networks constitute the backbone of all emerging information and communication systems; switches and routers are their basic building blocks. We address the architecture and implementation of this basic infrastructure for all kinds of electronic systems.

The switch and router market is growing at a fast pace because performance requirements push more and more systems to abandon traditional bus-based architectures in order to benefit from the parallelism offered by switched interconnects; switched architectures gradually proliferate from WAN, MAN, LAN, and cluster interconnects to storage, server, computer I/O, processor-memory interconnects, embedded systems, and networks-on-a-chip. Many companies are now developing new communication standards and products for different market segments (HyperTransport, PCI Express, PCI Express Advanced Switching, Rapid I/O, InfiniBand, 40Gigabit Ethernet, etc.). We foresee the emergence of commodity switches --low cost, universal building blocks-- that will alter the router market in the same way as the supercomputer market was altered by clusters of PC's based on commodity processors.

To achieve these goals, switch architectures must be radically improved and switch cost must drop. We are searching for these solutions, striving to unify the concepts and the architectures across the above wide range of scales, thus reducing the cost by allowing for the reuse of design and components. We bring together many of the leading European experts in interconnection network, switch, and router architecture, thus coordinating their R&D work.

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