Emerging network applications are shifting from routing and traffic management
to those requiring inspection and modification of packet contents. Such applications
act on data streams, and the requirement to process every byte of a packet
exceeds the already-substantial processing capabilities of high-speed networking
equipment.
Network processors are application-specific processors that are optimized to
bridge the gap between the performance of ASIC and the programmability of
general-purpose processors. Performance on traditional network applications is
impressive, but we believe that these...