Abstract:High-Performance routers and switches need large throughput packet buffers to hold packets. However, the technique of commercially available memories is limited and can hardly fulfill this high throughput packet buffers. As a result, the development of networks is restricted severely. This paper presents a tri-stage memory array architecture to solve the problem, which can accomplish the arbitrary high-speed packet buffer theoretically. It is proved that the critical queue first algorithm can be applied as the memory management algorithm to get zero delay scheduling as well as minimum scale system. Furthermore, the design of hardware implementation architecture of the tri-stage memory array system is provided finally.