Generally speaking, the cell switching architecture of the present inventionoffers a powerful, simple, and in many ways elegant solution to the problem ofproviding cost-effective, high-bandwidth, fault-tolerant cell switching. Thearchitecture is based on a network of switching elements connected in ahypercubetopology to form a switch fabric. The generalized hypercube is D dimensional,where D ~ 3 when all radices in the radix set are 2 and D ~ 2 when at leastone ofthe radices is greater than 2. A fully-populated switch is fully symmetric:eachswitching element has the same number and kind of connections to both itsneighbors and to the outside world as every other switching element. In anexemplaryembodiment, each switching element is connected to one data source and onedatasink, e.g., a Utopia bus or other broadband connection. In the same exemplaryembodiment, links between switching elements are bidirectional andsynchronous,operating in accordance with a Cell Exchange Cycle (CEC). Buffer space for alimited number N of cells is provided within each switching element. Multipathrouting allows a switching element to forward a cell along any of multiplepaths.Retrograde and lateral motion, i.e., motion other than in a forward directiontowardthe cell's destination, is also allowed to relieve temporary local congestion.
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