Parallel on-the-fly processing of fixed length cells

Apparatus (9, 45, 50, 60, 70) for processing a sequential stream (10, 30) of fixed length cells, received via a slotted transmission medium (11, 41), comprising:

• a) a demultiplexer (12, 52, 62, 72) providing N sub-streams of fixed length cells out of said sequential stream (10, 30) of fixed length cells, where N is an integer equal to at least 2,
• b) N identical, parallel processing paths (13.x, 53.x, 63.x, 73.x) connected to said demultiplexer (12, 52, 62, 72) such that
• each of said N sub-streams is fed into another one of said N processing paths (13.x, 53.x, 63.x,88.x),
• the feeding into said processing paths (13.x, 53.x, 63.x, 88.x) taking place in a chronological, staggered manner, the period between a sub-stream being fed into a particular processing path and a next sub-stream being fed into another processing path being identical to the slot duration (T) of said slotted transmission medium (11, 41),
• c) a multiplexer (17, 57, 67, 77) for multiplexing sub-streams provided at the output of said N processing paths (13.x, 53.x, 63.x, 88.x) into an output stream (18, 50) of fixed length cells maintaining the sequential cell order of said sequential stream (10, 30) of fixed length cells, said multiplexer comprising a register for storing a sub-stream until released by a clock signal to ensure that the exact arrangement of the cells within the slots and the allocation of slots on said slotted transmission medium (11, 41) is maintained.