Switcherland - A Scalable Interconnect for Distributed Multimedia Systems

Hans Eberle
Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH), Institute of Computer Systems 
CH-8092 Zurich, Switzerland

Abstract

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.