Cross Bar Switch: Delta Networks

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Multistage interconnection networks 

(MINs) are a class of high-speed computer networks usually


composed of processing elements (PEs) on one end of the network and memory elements (MEs) on
the other end, connected together by switching elements (SEs). The switching elements themselves
are usually connected to each other in stages, hence the name.

Such networks include omega networks, delta networks and many other types. MINs are typically
used in high-performance or parallel computing as a low-latency interconnection (as opposed to
traditional packet switching networks), though they could be implemented on top of a packet switching
network. Though the network is typically used for routing purposes, it could also be used as a co-
processor to the actual processors for such uses as sorting; cyclic shifting, as in a perfect
shuffle network; and bitonic sorting.

Cross bar switch

In electronics, a crossbar switch (also known as cross-point switch, crosspoint switch, or matrix


switch) is a switch connecting multiple inputs to multiple outputs in a matrix manner. Originally the
term was used literally, for a matrix switch controlled by a grid of crossing metal bars, and later was
broadened to matrix switches in general. It is one of the principal switch architectures, together with
a memory switch and a crossover switch.

Contents
 [hide]

1 General properties

2 Applications

3 Implementations

o 3.1 Mechanical

o 3.2 Electromechanical/telep

hony

o 3.3 Electromechanical/instr

umentation

o 3.4 Telephone exchange

o 3.5 Semiconductor

4 Arbitration

5 See also

6 References

7 External links

[edit]General properties
A crossbar switch is an assembly of individual switches between multiple inputs and multiple outputs.
The switches are arranged in a matrix. If the crossbar switch has M inputs and N outputs, then a
crossbar has a matrix with M x N cross-points or places where the "bars" cross. At each crosspoint is
a switch; when closed, it connects one of M inputs to one of N outputs. A given crossbar is a single
layer, non-blocking switch. Collections of crossbars can be used to implement multiple layer and/or
blocking switches. A crossbar switching system is also called a co-ordinate switching system.

[edit]Applications

Crossbar switches are most famously used in information processing applications such as telephony
and packet switching, but they are also used in applications such as mechanical sorting machines
with inputs.

The matrix layout of a crossbar switch is also used in some semiconductor memory devices


(see nanotechnology). Here the "bars" are extremely thin metal "wires", and the "switches" are fusible
links. The fuses are blown or opened using high voltage and read using low voltage. Such devices are
called programmable read-only memory.[1] At the 2008 NSTI Nanotechnology Conference a paper
was presented which discussed a nanoscale crossbar implementation of an adding circuit used as an
alternative to logic gates for computation.[2]

Furthermore, matrix arrays are fundamental to modern flat-panel displays. Thin-film-transistor LCDs
have a transistor at each crosspoint, so they could be considered to include a crossbar switch as part
of their structure.

For video switching in home and professional theater applications, a crossbar switch (or a matrix
switch, as it is more commonly called in this application) is used to make the output of multiple video
appliances available simultaneously to every monitor or every room throughout a building. In a typical
installation, all the video sources are located on an equipment rack, and are connected as inputs to
the matrix switch.

Where central control of the matrix is practical, a typical rack-mount matrix switch offers front-panel
buttons to allow manual connection of inputs to outputs. An example of such a usage might be a
sports bar, where numerous programs are displayed simultaneously. In order to accomplish this, a
sports bar would ordinarily need to purchase a separate cable or satellite subscription for each display
for which independent control is desired. The matrix switch enables the signals to be re-routed on a
whim, thus allowing the establishment to purchase only those subscriptions needed to cover the total
number of unique programs viewed anywhere in the building.

Such switches are used in high-end home theater applications. Video sources typically shared include
set-top cable/satellite receivers or DVD changers; the same concept applies to audio as well. The
outputs are wired to televisions in individual rooms. The matrix switch is controlled via
an Ethernet or RS-232 serial connection by a whole-house automation controller, such as those made
by AMX, Crestron, or Control4 - which provides the user interface that enables the user in each room
to select which appliance to watch. The actual user interface varies by system brand, and might
include a combination of on-screen menus, touch-screens, and handheld remote controls. The system
is necessary to enable the user to select the program they wish to watch from the same room they will
watch it from, otherwise it would be necessary (and arguably absurd) for them to walk to the
equipment rack.

The special crossbar switches used in distributing satellite TV signals are called Multiswitches.

[edit]Implementations

Historically, a crossbar switch consisted of metal bars associated with each input and output, together
with some means of controlling movable contacts at each cross-point. In the later part of the 20th
Century these literal crossbar switches declined and the term came to be used figuratively for
rectangular array switches in general. Modern "crossbar switches" are usually implemented with
semiconductor technology. An important emerging class of optical crossbars is being implemented
with MEMS technology.

[edit]Mechanical

A type of middle 19th Century telegraph exchange consisted of a grid of vertical and horizontal brass
bars with a hole at each intersection. The operator inserted a brass pin to connect one telegraph line
to another.

[edit]Electromechanical/telephony

A telephony crossbar switch is an electromechanical device for switching telephone calls. The first


design of what is now called a crossbar switch was Western Electric's "coordinate selector" of 1915. It
was little used in America, but the LM Ericsson company used an improved version for rural
exchanges in Sweden. To save money on control systems, this system was organized on
the stepping switch or selector principle rather than the link principle. The system design used
in AT&T's 1XB crossbar exchanges, which entered revenue service from 1938, was developed by Bell
Telephone Labs, based on the rediscovered link principle. Delayed by the Second World War, several
millions of urban 1XB lines were installed from the 1950s in the United States. Crossbar switching
quickly spread to the rest of the world, replacing most earlier designs like
the Strowger and Panel systems in larger installations in the U.S. Graduating from entirely
electromechanical control on introduction, they were gradually elaborated to have full electronic
control and a variety ofcalling features including short-code and speed-dialing. In the UK
the Plessey Company produced a range of crossbar exchanges, but their widespread rollout by the
British Post Office began later than in other countries, and then was inhibited by the parallel
development of TXE reed relay and electronic exchange systems, so they never achieved a large
number of customer connections although they did find some success as tandem switch exchanges.

Crossbar switches use switching matrices made from a two-dimensional array of contacts arranged in
an x-y format. These switching matrices are operated by a series of horizontal bars arranged over the
contacts. Each such "select" bar can be rocked up or down by electromagnets to provide access to
two levels of the matrix. A second set of vertical "hold" bars is set at right angles to the first (hence the
name, "crossbar") and also operated by electromagnets. The select bars carry spring-
loaded wire fingers that enable the hold bars to operate the contacts beneath the bars. When the
select and then the hold electromagnets operate in sequence to move the bars, they trap one of the
spring fingers to close the contacts beneath the point where two bars cross. This then makes the
connection through the switch as part of setting up a calling path through the exchange. Once
connected, the select magnet is then released so it can use its other fingers for other connections,
while the hold magnet remains energized for the duration of the call to maintain the connection. The
crossbar switching interface was referred to as the TXK or TXC switch (Telephone
eXchange Crossbar) - in the UK.

Western Electric 100 Point six-wire Type B crossbar switch

The Bell System Type B crossbar switch of the 1960s was made in the largest quantity. The majority
were 200 point switches, with twenty verticals and ten levels of three wires, but this example is a 100
point six wire switch. Each select bar carries ten fingers so any of the ten circuits assigned to the ten
verticals can connect to either of two levels. Five select bars, each able to rotate up or down, mean a
choice of ten links to the next stage of switching. Each crosspoint in this particular model connected
six wires. Note the Vertical Off-Normal contacts next to the hold magnets, lined up along the bottom of
the switch. They perform logic and memory functions, and the hold bar keeps them in the active
position as long as the connection is up. The Horizontal Off Normals on the sides of the switch are
activated by the horizontal bars when the "butterfly magnets" rotate them. This only happens while the
connection is being set up, since the butterflies are only energized then.

Late-model Western Electric crossbar switch


Back of Type C

The majority of Bell System switches were made to connect three wires including the tip and ring of
a balanced pair circuit and a sleeve lead for control. Many connected six wires, either for two distinct
circuits or for a four wire circuit or other complex connection. The Bell System Type C miniature
crossbar of the 1970s was similar, but the fingers projected forward from the back and the select bars
held paddles to move them. The majority of type C had twelve levels; these were the less common
ten level ones. The Northern Electric Minibarused in SP1 switch was similar but even smaller. The ITT
Pentaconta Multiswitch of the same era had usually 22 verticals, 26 levels, and six to twelve wires.
Ericsson crossbar switches sometimes had only five verticals.

[edit]Electromechanical/instrumentation

For instrumentation use, James Cunningham, Son and Company [1] made high-speed, very-long-life
crossbar switches [2] with physically-small mechanical parts which permitted faster operation than
telephone-type crossbar switches. Many of their switches had the mechanical Boolean AND function
of telephony crossbar switches, but other models had individual relays (one coil per crosspoint) in
matrix arrays, connecting the relay contacts to [x] and [y] buses. These latter types were equivalent to
separate relays; there was no logical AND function built in. Cunningham crossbar switches had
precious-metal contacts capable of handling millivolt signals.

[edit]Telephone exchange
Early crossbar exchanges were divided into an originating side and a terminating side, while the later
and prominent Canadian and US SP1 switch and 5XB switch were not. When a user picked up
the telephone handset, the resulting line loop operating the user's line relay caused the exchange to
connect the user's telephone to an originating sender, which returned the user a dial tone. The sender
then recorded the dialed digits and passed them to the originating marker, which selected an outgoing
trunk and operated the various crossbar switch stages to connect the calling user to it. The originating
marker then passed the trunk call completion requirements (type of pulsing, resistance of the trunk,
etc) and the called party's details to the sender and released. The sender then relayed this
information to a terminating sender (which could be on either the same or a different exchange). This
sender then used a terminating marker to connect the calling user, via the selected incoming trunk, to
the called user, and caused the controlling relay set to pass intermittent ring voltage of about 90 VAC
at 20 Hz to ring the called user's phone bell, and return ringing tone to the caller.
The crossbar switch itself was simple: exchange design moved all the logical decision-making to
the common control elements, which as relay sets were themselves very reliable. The design criterion
was to have two hours of "downtime" for service every forty years, which was a huge improvement on
earlier electromechanical systems. The exchange design concept lent itself to incremental upgrades,
as the control elements could be replaced separately from the call switching elements. The minimum
size of a crossbar exchange was comparatively large, but in city areas with a large installed line
capacity the whole exchange occupied less space than other exchange technologies of equivalent
capacity. For this reason they were also typically the first switches to be replaced with digital systems,
which were even smaller and more reliable.

Two principles of using crossbar switches were used. One early method was based on the selector
principle, and used the switches as functional replacement for Strowger or stepping switches. Control
was distributed to the switches themselves. Call establishment progressed through the exchange
stage by stage, as successive digits were dialed. With the selector principle, each switch could only
handle its portion of one call at a time. Each moving contact of the array was multipled to
corresponding crosspoints on other switches to a selector in the next bank of switches. Thus an
exchange with a hundred 10x10 switches in five stages could only have twenty conversations in
progress. Distributed control meant there was no common point of failure, but also meant that the
setup stage lasted for the ten seconds or so the caller took to dial the required number. In control
occupancy terms this comparatively long interval degrades the traffic capacity of a switch.

"Banjo" wiring of a 100 point six wire Type B Bell System switch

Starting with the 1XB switch, the later and more common method was based on the link principle, and
used the switches as crosspoints. Each moving contact was multipled to the other contacts on the
same level by simpler "banjo" wires, to a link on one of the inputs of a switch in the next stage. The
switch could handle its portion of as many calls as it had levels or verticals. Thus an exchange with
forty 10x10 switches in four stages could have a hundred conversations in progress. The link principle
was more efficient, but required a more complex control system to find idle links through the switching
fabric.

This meant common control, as described above: all the digits were recorded, then passed to the
common control equipment - the marker - to establish the call at all the separate switch stages
simultaneously. A marker-controlled crossbar system had in the marker a highly vulnerable central
control; this was invariably protected by having duplicate markers. The great advantage was that the
control occupancy on the switches was of the order of one second or less, representing the operate
and release lags of the X-then-Y armatures of the switches. The only downside of common control
was the need to provide digit recorders enough to deal with the greatest forecast originating traffic
level on the exchange.

The Plessey TXK1 or 5005 design used an intermediate form, in which a clear path was marked
through the switching fabric by distributed logic, and then closed through all at once.

In some countries, no crossbar exchanges remain in revenue service. However, crossbar exchanges
remain in use in countries like Russia, where some massive city telephone networks have not yet
been fully upgraded to digital technology. Preserved installations may be seen in museums like The
Museum of Communications in Seattle, Washington, and the Science Museum in London.

Changing nomenclature can confuse: in current American terminology a "switch" now frequently
refers to a system which is also called a "telephone exchange" (the usual term in English)--that is, a
large collection of selectors of some sort within a building. For most of the twentieth century a
"Strowger switch" or a "crossbar switch" referred to an individual piece of mechanical equipment
making up part of an exchange. Hence the pictures above show a "crossbar switch" using the earlier
meaning.

[edit]Semiconductor

Semiconductor implementations of crossbar switches typically consist of a set of input amplifiers or


retimers connected to a series of metalizations or "bars" within a semiconductor device. A similar set
of metalizations or "bars" are connected to output amplifiers or retimers. At each cross-point where
the "bars" cross, a pass transistor is implemented which connects the bars. When the pass transistor
is enabled, the input is connected to the output.

As computer technologies have improved, crossbar switches have found uses in systems such as
the multistage interconnection networks that connect the various processing units in a Uniform
Memory Accessparallel processor to the array of memory elements.

[edit]Arbitration

A standard problem in using crossbar switches is that of setting the cross-points. In the classic
telephony application of cross-bars, the crosspoints are closed and open as the telephone calls come
and go. InAsynchronous Transfer Mode or packet switching applications, the crosspoints must be
made and broken at each decision interval. In high-speed switches, the settings of all of the cross-
points must be determined and then set millions or billions of times per second. One approach for
making these decisions quickly is through the use of a wavefront arbiter.

[edit]See also
 Nonblocking minimal spanning switch - describes how to combine crossbar switches into
larger switches.
[edit]References

1. ^ Yong Chen, Gun-Young Jung, Douglas A A Ohlberg, Xuema Li, Duncan R Stewart, Jan O Jeppesen,
Kent A Nielsen, and J Fraser Stoddart, Nanoscale molecular-switch crossbar circuits,

2003 Nanotechnology 14 462-468

2. ^ Mouttet, B. (2008-06-02). "Logicless Computational Architectures with Nanoscale Crossbar Arrays".


NSTI Nanotech 2008 Conference. Retrieved 2008-06-02.

Banyan switch
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

In electronics, a banyan switch is a complex crossover switch used in electrical or optical switches.

It is named for its resemblance to the roots of the banyan tree which cross over in complex patterns.
Logical banyan switches are used in logic or signal pathways to crossover switching of signals onto new
pathways.

They can be mechanical Microelectromechanical systems, electrical or optical NLO. Their complexity


depends on the topology of the individual switches in a switch matrix (how wide it is by how many 'plies' or
layers of switches it takes), to implement a desired crossover logic.

Contents
 [hide]

1 Design

2 A simple example

3 Future directions and further

information

4 See also

[edit]Design

Typical crossover matrices follow this formula: an N×N banyan switch uses (N/2) log2 N elements. Other
formulas are used for differing number of crossover layers, and scaling is possible, but becomes very large
and complex with large N×N arrays. CAD and AI can be used to take the drudgery out of creating these
designs. A banyan network is implemented by interconnecting 2×2 switching networks in multiple and
recursive stages.

The switches are measured by how many stages, and how many up/down sorters and crosspoints they
have. Switches often have buffers built-in for faster switching.

A typical switch may have:

1. A 2×2 and 4×4 down sorter

2. Followed by an 8×8 up sorter

3. Followed by a 2×2 crosspoint banyan switch network

This results in 3 level sorting for a 3 stage banyan network switch.

[edit]A simple example

Consider a 2×2 banyan switch, which requires (2/2) log2 2 = 1 switching element. This switch takes two
inputs, numbered 0 and 1, and two outputs, numbered 0 and 1. Every packet that comes in has a header
that contains one bit indicating what its destination is (either 0 or 1). If the switch reads the bit and it has
value 0, it sends the packet to its higher output (which is 0 in this case), and to its lower output if the routing
bit is one. By connecting these switching elements in series and parallel it is possible therefore, to route
packets in more complicated ways depending on the desired routes to establish.

[edit]Future directions and further information

The future is moving to larger arrays of inputs and outputs needed in a very small space. See wafer
fabrication and VLAs.

[edit]See also

 Crossover switches

 Crossbar switches

 Clos network a non blocking crossover switch that needs fewer than N² switches

 Nonblocking minimal spanning switch and signal switching.

 Optical computer
Breather switch
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article does not cite any references or sources.


Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may
be challenged and removed. (January 2009)

It has been suggested that this article or section be merged into expansion


joint. (Discuss)

Subway track expansion joint onWilliamsburg Bridge, New York

A breather switch on the TGV line

A breather switch (or adjustment switch) is a long diagonal gap in rail tracks created to allow for the
transition between two segments of continuous welded rail (CWR), or at the transition between CWR and
jointed track. In the UK, they are called "expansion joints".

Breather switches have two advantages over traditionally joined track. Firstly, they eliminate or significantly
reduce the noise and minor wheel damage created when a trainpasses over the small gap between jointed
rails, and secondly, where a section of CWR is particularly prone to expansion, these act as relief points to
ensure that under extreme circumstances track does not warp out of shape or cause a sun kink.

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