Free PCB builder extraordinaire Kenneth did an extensive teardown of an HP ProCurve 2824 Ethernet Switch. He analyzes the PCB piece by piece, explaining the smaller function blocks and how they fit together.
So that is how all of the internals of a 24 port managed switch interact with each other at the system level. The processor is surprisingly under-powered, but only handles clerical tasks with respect to switch configuration. The switch itself is a multi-layer tree consisting of physical transceivers, 1Gb switches linking 12 ports, and a 10Gb switching fabric back plane linking multiple switches.
Via Twitter.
Great explanation of fabric ASICs interconnect. I wonder how many layers and routing constraints are required for a 10 Gbit/sec interconnect?