McKeown again presents a router architecture, except this time using optics. He begins with the claim that the centralized crossbar and scheduler approach from his previous paper does not scale; this is believable because of the n^2 complexity of the matching problem necessary to efficiently switch packets, and also an argument that multistage systems lead to unpredictable latencies.
He presents his new queuing design, where multiple sets of input queues are connected to output queues cyclically; I think the goal there is to reduce the non-determinism so that the switch can run faster with more predictable latency. He also considers power to be the limiting factor of how much equipment can be stuffed into a rack.
I find it difficult to tell what the magnitude of this paper's contribution is; it seems like it could be either a seminal work laying out a new architecture, or a pie-in-the-sky paper which could never be implemented.
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