te traffic according to specific characteristics) and allows a graphical user interface (GUI)-based co-simulation with Agere's network processors and traffic managers for a full-fledged configuration evaluation and performance analysis. For instance, a designer can specify the number switch fabric devices in a configuration, the number of ports per device, and the number of serdes links per device. Backpressure thresholds can be decided on a per-device, per-port, or per-queue basis. This may require constraining the latency, especially in a bid/grant approach. The simulator will pro- vide at the output the minimum, maximum, and average values for all per-traffic flow delays, all per- queue occupancies and delays, all per-port and per-traffic class delays, and all per-device delays. It also calculates the throughputs for all of these categories. Downloaded from Digital Engineering Library @ McGraw-Hill (www.digitalengineeringlibrary.com) Copyright © 2004 The McGraw-Hill Companies. All rights reserved. Any use is subject to the Terms of Use as given at the website. SWITCH FABRICS 302 NETWORK PROCESSORS SUMMARY The market research organization InStat/MDR reports that the switch fabric market will experience compound annual growth rate (CAGR) for shipments of 141 percent from 2002 through to 2006. Although early opportunities are in router and switch markets, by 2006, significant opportunities be available in at least 13 different target markets, leading to the phenomenal growth, according to the same firm. In this chapter, we provided an overview of the established techniques for fast switching and, more importantly, how this is being accomplished through the use of switch fabrics. We reviewed fundamental concepts and identified the underlying trade-offs involved in many of the approaches that designers have taken. As two representative examples of different state-of-the-art switch fabric archi- tectures, we discussed the IBM PowerPRS family of switch fabrics along with the associated IBM chips that support the actu