Network processor design

Fueled by the explosive expansion of the communication and networking applications over the past decade, networking equipment vendors have created a huge demand for integrated circuit (IC) chips to implement various ever changing and evolving network applications. Network Processor (NP) is a relatively new member in the IC chip families. Many major semiconductor companies and startups have invested very heavily over the past few years to build NP chips, software development environment, peripheral devices and other infrastructures. The main goal is to provide a general platform with enough features, performance and flexibility to let equipment vendors deploy their networking boxes at a faster pace and lower cost to meet the demands of the fast growing and constantly changing market. During the last couple of years, there are an increasing number of equipment vendors turning their attention to NPs in order to shorten the equipment development cycle while reducing cost. This paper will briefly compare the solutions for network applications provided by general-purpose microprocessors, ASIC chips and network processors. The paper will mainly focus on the challenges of the NP design in terms of architecture choices, logic and physical implementation. Future trends and requirements of NP design on the manufacturing technology will also be discussed at the end.