System having a meshed backplane and process for transferring data therethrough
AssigneeADC Broadband Access Systems, Inc.
InventorsKumar Chinnaswamy, Paul H. Dormitzer
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
A meshed backplane has dedicated pairs of connections for high-speed serial connection in each direction between each of multiple application modules and each other application module. A management/control bus is provided for out-of-band signaling. The mesh of serial differential pairs may be used for management/control bus signals when necessary. A time division multiplexing fabric is also provided for telephony applications. A star interconnect region is provided for distribution of signals from redundant clocks.
Claims17
A process for switching data flow from one of a plurality of data communication application modules in a chassis interconnected across a backplane in said chassis, said process comprising the steps of:
- A) receiving data at a one of said modules;
- B) applying said data m bits at a time to an m-bit-wide parallel bus, where m is greater than one;
- C) determining on which port of said one of said modules said data is to be transmitted, said port being directly connected through said backplane to another one of said modules to which said data is to be directed;
- D) appending a tag to said data to indicate on which port said data is to be transmitted;
- E) gating said m bits of data into a channel associated with said transmitting port;
- F) transmitting said data from said transmitting port across said backplane to said other one of said modules to which said data is to be directed;
- and
- G) providing control data for the receiving and transmitting data over a bus, wherein the bus is connected to each of the plurality of data communication application modules and a chassis control module.
A meshed backplane in a chassis for interconnecting N data communication application modules for data communication between them with N greater than 2, said meshed backplane comprising:
- N(N−1) full-duplex serial links each connecting one of said N application modules with another with a minimum throughput of 64 kilobits per second;
- at least two redundant management information buses each providing a connection to each application module and to at least two chassis control modules;
- and
- an embedded clock signal, wherein the data communication is self-clocked.
A data switch, comprising:
- a backplane mesh organized as a plurality of slots to connect to a plurality of application modules, said backplane mesh providing an independent data path from each said slot to every other slot, said backplane mesh providing a loopback in each said slot;
- a controller module having a routing table;
- and
- a bus connected to each said slot and said controller module, said bus providing control data for the data flow through the backplane mesh, whereby said independent data paths enable different types of data traffic to flow simultaneously through said data switch.
A method for flexibly routing a backplane, comprising steps of:
- providing a backplane mesh organized as a plurality of slots to connect to a plurality of application modules;
- providing each said slot with a slot ID;
- reading, upon insertion of each said plurality of application modules into a slot of said plurality of slots, ID of said slot;
- transmitting from each inserted application module the slot ID of the slot to which said application module is connected;
- building a routing table in response to each said transmitted slot ID,
- whereby said backplane may be flexibly routed;
- and
- building a mapping table in each said application module, wherein each mapping table is a subset of the routing table.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.