Fiber channel switch employing distributed queuing

A fibre channel switch for interconnecting a plurality of devices, each device having a node port, such that frames of data originating from a source port having a source node port may be transferred through the fibre channel switch to a destination device having a destination node port in accordance with a distributed source and destination queuing algorithm, comprising:

• a plurality of fabric ports, each fabric port coupled to a different device through corresponding source or destination node port,
• a plurality of port controllers, each port controller located on a different fabric port, each port controller further comprising the distributed source and destination queuing algorithm for queuing frames sourced or destined from a device, or to, itself, and wherein, each port controller operates independently of the queuing of frames by any other port controller,
• a control network for communicating timing and destination commands between each port controller corresponding to when and where frame transfers are to be made,
• a bit-sliced shared memory having a common pool of memory buffers,
• a shared memory controller coupled to each port controller, for bit-slicing data and memory addresses being transmitted between the port controllers and the shared memory, wherein data and destination addresses are transferred to and from the shared memory, the bit-sliced shared memory being coupled to each fabric port through the shared memory controller, wherein each fabric port can access the shared memory directly.