ATLAS I: a 10 Gbit/s ATM Switch Chip with Credit Flow Control
1. What is ATLAS I
ATLAS I (ATm multi-LAne backpressure Switch One) is a single-chip gigabit
ATM switch with optional credit-based (multilane backpressure) flow control.
This 6-million-transistor 0.35-micron CMOS chip offers: 10 Gbit/s outgoing
throughput, sub-microsecond cut-through latency, 256-cell shared buffer
containing multiple logical output queues, priorities, multicasting, VP/VC
translation, advanced flow control architecture, and load monitoring.
It is a general-purpose building block for high-speed communication in
wide (WAN), local (LAN), and system (SAN) area networking, supporting
a mixture of services from real-time, guaranteed quality-of-service to
best-effort, bursty and flooding traffic, in a range of applications from
telecom to multimedia and multiprocessor NOW.
2. Who develops ATLAS I
ATLAS I is designed in the Computer Architecture
and VLSI Systems Division, of the
Institute of Computer Science (ICS), Foundation for Research & Technology - Hellas (FORTH), in the Science and Technology
Park of Crete (STEP-C), in Heraklion,
Crete, Greece.
ATLAS I is being developed within the
ASICCOM Project, funded by the European Union
ACTS Programme. The ASICCOM Consortium consists of industrial partners
(INTRACOM, Greece; SGS
THOMSON, France and Italy; BULL,
France), telecom operators (TELENOR,
Norway; TELEFONICA,
Spain), and research institutes (FORTH,
Greece; SINTEF, Norway; Poli.
di Milano, Italy; Democritos,
Greece).
3. Contact Point
For further information, beyond what is available below, please contact
Prof. Manolis Katevenis, FORTH-ICS,
Vassilika Vouton, P.O. Box 1385, Heraklion, Crete, GR 711 10 Greece.
E-mail: katevenis@ics.forth.gr;
Tel: +30 2810 39.16.64; Fax: +30 2810 39.16.61
4. Reading List
For more information on ATLAS I, please refer to the following documents.
These are divided in three categories: (i) general overview and
architecture of ATLAS I, (ii) methods to use ATLAS I and take
advantage of its features, and (iii) implementation of ATLAS
I. Within each category, documents are listed in order of increasing
depth and detail. (Members of the ASICCOM Consortium also have access
to a number of working documents
that are not yet stable enough to be made public).
4.1 General Overview and Architecture of ATLAS I
- General overview in plain text (2 pages):
lists the features of ATLAS I and briefly discusses ways to exploit
its credit-based (multilane backpressure) flow control.
- Transparencies of a General Overview
Talk on ATLAS I (html/gif).
- ``ATLAS I: A General-Purpose, Single-Chip
ATM Switch with Credit-Based Flow Control'' (by M. Katevenis,
D. Serpanos, P. Vatsolaki), in Proc. Hot Interconnects IV Symposium,
Stanford Univ., CA, USA, Aug. 1996, pp. 63-73. A good detailed
introduction to ATLAS I, appropriate as first reading on this switch
(11 pages, 63 KB gziped Postscript).
4.2 Using ATLAS I and taking Advantage of its Features
- ``Switching Fabrics with Internal
Backpressure using the ATLAS I Single-Chip ATM Switch'' (by M.
Katevenis, D. Serpanos, E. Spyridakis), in Proc. GLOBECOM'97
Conference, Phoenix, AZ, USA, Nov. 1997, pp. 242-246. Explains
the use of ATLAS' credit flow control inside large switch "boxes",
to provide the high performance of output queueing at the low cost
of input queueing, while any desired flow control method is employeed
outside the box (6 pages, 52 KB gziped Postscript).
- ``Credit-Flow-Controlled ATM for
MP Interconnection: the ATLAS I Single-Chip ATM Switch'' (by
M. Katevenis, D. Serpanos, E. Spyridakis), in Proc. 4th Int.
Symp. on High-Perf. Computer Arch. (HPCA-4) Las Vegas, NV, USA, Feb.
1998, pp. 47-56. Argues that ATM extended with credit-based
flow control has notable similarities to wormhole routing, the popular
multiprocessor interconnection network architecture. Then, it compares
the credit protocol of ATLAS I (similar to QFC) to the wormhole backpressure
protocol, and shows why the former performs quite better. Together
with the GLOBECOM'97 paper above, this paper offers a new perspective
on the merits of switching fabrics, SAN's, LAN's, or entire sub-networks
that employee internal backpressure (credit flow control) (11 pages,
57 KB gziped Postscript).
The Transparencies of this Talk at HPCA-4
-
``Admission Control and Routing in ATM Networks using Inferences from
Measured Buffer Occupancy'' (by C. Courcoubetis, G. Kesidis,
A. Ridder, J. Walrand, R. Weber), in IEEE Trans. on Communications,
vol. 43, no. 4, April 1995, pp. 1778-1784. Describes a method
for the accelerated measurement of the cell loss probability (CLP)
of the real traffic that passes through a switch; this allows real-time
monitoring and decision making, even in cases where the CLP is so
low that normal measurement methods would require too long a measurement
time; ATLAS I provides the hardware support for such accelerated measurement
(7 pages, 208 KB Postscript). are also available (html/gif).
4.3 Implementation of ATLAS I
- ``Implementation of ATLAS I:
a Single-Chip ATM Switch with Backpressure'' (by G. Kornaros,
D. Pnevmatikatos, P. Vatsolaki, G. Kalokerinos, C. Xanthaki, D. Mavroidis,
D. Serpanos, M. Katevenis), in Proc. IEEE Hot Interconnects
VI Symposium, Stanford, California, USA, Aug. 1998. A slightly
shorter version of this paper appears in IEEE Micro, vol. 19,
no. 1, Jan/Feb. 1999, pp. 30-41, under the title ``ATLAS I:
Implementing a Single-Chip ATM Switch with Backpressure''. Reports
on the design complexity and silicon cost of ATLAS I and of the individual
functions that the chip supports. Based on these metrics, we evaluate
the architecture of the switch. We also show that the cost of credit
support (10% in chip area and 4% in chip power) is minuscule compared
to its benefits. (Available in HTML or Postscript; 12 pages).
- ``Pipelined Multi-Queue Management
in a VLSI ATM Switch Chip with Credit-Based Flow Control'' (by
G. Kornaros, C. Kozyrakis, P. Vatsolaki, M. Katevenis), in
Proc. 17th Conf. on Adv. Research in VLSI (ARVLSI'97), Univ. of Michigan
at Ann Arbor, MI USA, Sept. 1997, pp. 127-144. Describes the
implementation of the queue management block, the heart of ATLAS'
control section --a dual parallel pipeline that manages the multiple
queues of ready cells, the per-flow-group credits, and the cells that
are waiting for credits; special emphasis is placed on the full-custom
part of queue management, including the content-addressable and priority
blocks in it (13 pages, 94 KB gziped Postscript).
- ``The Memory Structures of ATLAS
I, a High Performance, 16x16 ATM Switch Supporting Backpressure''
(by D. Pnevmatikatos, G. Kornaros, G. Kalokairinos, C. Xanthaki),
in Proc. of the 11th Annual IEEE Intnl. ASIC Conf. (ASIC'98),
Rochester, NY, USA, Sept. 1998, pp. 23-27. Describes in detail
the memory structures of ATLAS I. First presents the requirements
posed by the architecture, and then presents the solutions used in
its implementation. Where the actual implementation was limited by
our design environment, we propose alternative, more efficient possible
implementations. (5 pages, 125 KB gziped Postscript).
- ``Pipelined Memory
Shared Buffer for VLSI Switches'' (by M. Katevenis, P. Vatsolaki,
A. Efthymiou), in Proc. ACM SIGCOMM '95 Conference, Cambridge,
MA USA, Aug. 1995, pp. 39-48. Describes the pipelined memory
organization, which is used for the (shared) cell buffer of ATLAS
I (Patent Application pending (European 95410074.9, USA 08/506019);
August 1994) (10 pages, 81 KB gziped Postscript).
- ``ATLAS I: A Single-Chip ATM Switch
with HIC Links and Multi-Lane Back-Pressure'' (by M. Katevenis,
P. Vatsolaki), in Proc. EMSYS 96 Conf. (ESPRIT OMI: Embedded
Microprocessor Systems), Berlin, Germany, Sept. 1996, IOS Press, ISBN
90 5199 300 5, pp. 126-136. Describes ATLAS I, with particular
emphasis on the physical/datalink layer used by the chip (IEEE Std.
1355 ``HIC/HS'') and why and how multilane backpressure was added
as an optional extension on top of the single-lane backpressure provided
by the 1355 standard (11 pages, 42 KB gziped Postscript).
The papers listed above more or less suffice to cover all published aspects
of ATLAS I. For other published papers, on ATLAS I and on other projects,
see the detailed publications list
of the Computer Architecture and VLSI Systems Division.