Unicorns and centaurs: Architecting SOCs for software defined networking

Software Defined Networks (SDN) are a major development in communications, providing a means for controlling and reducing the complexity of managing the many protocols and layers that are in modern networks, and aiding virtualization of networks using a myriad of tunneling techniques. As with most complex systems there are (at least) two perspectives on SDN: a view from the hardware, where SDN is about feeding the silicon systems that are driven by the slow evolution of network silicon progress; and a view from above, a software perspective, where the requirements come from replicating and enhancing the features used in legacy equipment. The reconciliation of these two viewpoints is difficult at a network appliance level, and even harder at an SOC level. We will explore these two perspectives and this reconciliation in various SOC architectures, and investigate how these various architectures satisfy the needs of the networks.