This paper reports a prototyping system which can evaluate the performance of the message sequence chart based protocol described in SAL after compiling and downloading the SAL description into the newly developed adapter board built in a workstation. Experimental results show rapid evaluation of the layer 2 protocols such as LAPD and SSCOP in a real environment.

This paper describes a real-time emulation method based on the use of commercial FPGAs, high-speed interconnect switch devices and software tools (gate array LSI to/from FPGA netlist migration and multi-FPGA partitioning tools) to emulate large scale high-speed communication switching system without the need for conventional specific wiring structures between FPGAs and timing control circuit insertion. This method is applied to line interface units (LUs) that have 20 MHz operation; we employ the LU board and emulation boards, both of which have hierarchical structures with small sub-boards. The proposed LU board structure has the advantage of utilizing a common LU board for rapid prototyping as well as developing cost effective, practical high-performance Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) switching systems for broadband ISDN (Integrated Services Digital Networks). The results of multiple FPGA partitioning on the emulation board suggest that the proposed method will yield economic systems that are also practical.

A protocol control system architecture that provides very high processing performance for gigabit-per-second data communication in a broadband network is described. The architecture connects protocol controllers in parallel and uses a distributed multilink method that features a distributed algorithm for allocating transmission on the transmitting side and a resequencing algorithm on the receiving side. The system performance and the influence of transmission errors caused by cell loss in an asynchronous transfer mode network are evaluated. It is shown that by reducing each controller's distributing overhead, the system increases throughput up to 90 times that achieved when using a single controller.>