All-optical broadcasting switch fabric architecture for Gigabit Switching Router (GSR)

In current high performance IP Gigabit Switching Router (GSR) design, one of the key issues is about switching fabrics. In the traditional bus-based router architectures, the data transfer rate of copper backplanes will soon reach the speed limit because of connector reflections and crosstalk. An optical switching fabric technology is necessary in order to satisfy the demand for high bandwidth and line switching rate. In this paper we firstly present a novel all-optical broadcasting switch fabric design scheme based on broadcasting bus architecture. In this section we also discuss the advantages and disadvantages of this kind of architecture and demonstrate that this kind of switching fabric architecture have no interior blocking as well as none I/O blocking (e.g. HOL). Secondly, we discuss such implementation scheme of all-optical broadcasting switch fabric architecture as queuing, scheduling and multicasting. Finally we get a conclusion that all-optical broadcasting switch fabric is one of the cost-effective solutions to design high-speed, scalable and simple switch fabric compared with complicated electric crossbar switch fabrics in GSR design.