Agere Systems Inc.
155
Data Sheet
May 2001
and Packet Payload Engine
Ambassador T8110 PCI-Based H.100/H.110 Switch
14
Connection Control—Standard and Virtual Channel
(continued)
14.2.3 Virtual Channel (Packet Payload) Switching
Packet payload switching is achieved by loading control fields into the connection memory for one-half simplex
connections (refer to Figure 37 and Figure 38) and loading control fields for a corresponding virtual channel into
the virtual channel memory (refer to Figure 39—Figure 41). A virtual channel connection consists of the following
two parts:
n
A one-half simplex connection
to
(or
from
) a channel (or channels) in the H1x0 or local bus TDM switching
domain. These connections are made in a similar manner to standard telephony switching connections—by
loading the proper control fields into the T8110 connection memory (refer to Section 14.2.1.1, Figure 38, and
Figure 39). There are two types of virtual channel connections: nonbonded refers to switching of a single TDM
channel each frame, bonded refers to switching of multiple TDM channels each frame. Additionally, subrate
switching is allowed for nonbonded virtual channels. Refer to Sections 14.2.3.1—14.2.3.3 for more details.
n
A store-and-forward buffer that has access
from
(or
to
) an external buffer which is defined somewhere in the
PCI bus space (see Section 14.2.3.4). The T8110 uses its data memory as the store-and-forward buffer.
Depending on the data memory configuration (refer to Figure 49), there can be as many as 512 unique virtual
channels defined simultaneously (using all 4 Kbytes of the available space). Configuration of the data memory
space for virtual channels is achieved by loading control fields into the virtual channel memory (refer to Section
14.2.1.2, 14.2.1.3, and Figure 39—Figure 41).
The above two parts define a virtual channel. Each virtual channel can be either:
n
From
TDM domain
to
PCI domain. The data flow from incoming serial TDM data to the PCI external buffer is
referred to as PUSH. In this case, the T8110 controls writes to the external buffer. Another agent on the PCI bus
(such as a coprocessor) would control the reads from the external buffer. The handshake between the T8110
and the other agent is described in Section 14.2.3.4.
n
From
PCI domain
to
TDM domain. The data flow from the PCI external buffer to outgoing serial TDM data is
referred to as PULL. In this case, the T8110 controls reads from the external buffer. Another agent on the PCI
bus (such as a coprocessor) would control the writes to the external buffer. The handshake between the T8110
and the other agent is described in Section 14.2.3.4.
14.2.3.1 Nonbonded Channels
A nonbonded virtual channel means that only one byte of information per 8 kHz frame is switched in the TDM
domain for that channel. The T8110 data memory configuration for any virtual channel holds multiple data bytes at
a time (minimum of 8 bytes, maximum of 256 bytes, in increments of 4 bytes). Since only 1 byte per frame is
switched, the data memory depth defined for a nonbonded virtual channel directly corresponds to the number of
TDM frames worth of data stored at one time. The concept is illustrated in Figure 53 and in Figure 54.