MULTICAST CONTENTION RESOLUTION WITH SINGLE-CYCLE WINDOWING USING CONTENT-ADDRESSABLE FIFOS

Although input-buffered space switches are more economical and simpler to implement pthan output-buffered space switches, they suffer from e xternal blocking because of destination port contention, We review con tention resolution methods used to avoid external blocking, and choose a solution based on ring reservation, resulting in an elegant and eff icient mechanism requiring only nearest-neighbor communications, In ad dition to external blocking, space switches suffer from head-of-line ( HOL) blocking, and our technique alleviates HOL blocking without arbit ration time overhead, This method makes use of a novel content address able first in/first out (CAFIFO) to achieve single-cycle windowing, an d the CAFIFO design and operation are described in detail. High multic ast throughput is achieved by employing call-splitting, Multiple laten cy priorities can also be supported, Simulation results, for both unic ast and multicast switching, and both random and bursty traffic, highl ight the versatility and excellent performance of the CAFIFO-based swi tch.