Switcherland - A Scalable Interconnect for Distributed Multimedia Systems

This paper describes a scalable interconnect for distributed multimedia systems based on crossbar switches. The interconnect is scalable in that it can be used to interconnect a distributed system at different levels. At the lowest level, the interconnect replaces an I/O bus of a workstation in that a switch connects processors and memory with I/O devices. If a large number of devices have to be interconnected, a workstation can contain several cascaded switches. Further, the switches can serve as a network interconnect for a group or cluster of workstations. To support applications that process time-dependent multimedia data such as video and audio, the interconnect offers connections with guaranteed bandwidths. This feature is an essential prerequisite for the integration of video and audio into a workstation environment and will eventually allow systems to treat video and audio like standard data types.