Abstract The knockout switch is a switch fabric proposed for fast packet switching. Under certain non-uniform traffic patterns (i.e. a ‘hot spot contention’) the switch exhibits an increase in the packet loss rate. A rearrangeable switch fabric based on knockout switch concepts is proposed which, on the occurrence of ‘hot spot’ traffic, reconfigures itself to guarantee a very low packet loss rate. The new switch architecture is presented, and parameters affecting performance are analysed. An implementation based on dynamically reconfigurable VLSI components is proposed.