We propose the Multi-Channel Deflection Crossbar (MCDC) as a promising architecture for broadband ATM switching under the realistic constraints imposed by VLSI technology. MCDC is an internally non-blocking, buffer efficient, crossbar based architecture. MCDC a's also capable of multi-channel switching with cell sequence integrity preserved. Through a comparative study against a well-known ATM switch architecture, we show that the proposed MCDC architecture is able to incorporate a greater number of input channels and buffers for a given IC die size and requires a lower clocking rate.