Methods for storing arriving cells in a shared multi-buffer ATM switch

A shared multi-buffer ATM switch is cost-effective, since it uses low-access-speed memories when compared with a shared single-buffer ATM switch. Due to the low access speed, however, the switch cannot read several cells from a buffer during a single access. Such an access conflict provides a high cell loss rate. In this paper, we propose several cell storage methods that avoid the access conflict, and we compare our approach via simulation with the previously proposed cost-ineffective solution that uses high speed memories under various load conditions. The results show that one of the proposed methods in this paper provides an almost equivalent cell loss characteristic to the previously proposed approach.