ATLAS: A Single-Chip ATM Switch for NOWs

Although ATM Asynchronous Transfer Mode is a widely accepted standard for WANs Wide Area Networks it has not yet been widely embraced by the NOW community because i most current ATM switches and interfaces have high latency and and ii they drop cells when even short term congestion happens In this paper we present ATLAS I a single chip ATM switch with Gbits sec aggregate I O throughput that was designed to address the above concerns ATLAS I provides sub microsecond cut through latency and optional back pressure credit based ow control which never drops ATM cells The architecture of ATLAS I has been fully speci ed and the design of the chip is well under progress ATLAS I will be fabricated by SGS Thomson Crolles France in m CMOS technology