Network Processors

CHAPTER 1 Introduction and Motivation

Network processors (NPs) are chips—programmable devices that can process network packets (up to hundreds of millions of them per second), at wire-speeds of multi-Gbps. Their ability to perform complex and flexible processing on each packet, as well as the fact that they can be programmed and reprogrammed as required, make them a perfect and easy solution for network systems vendors developing packet processing equipment.

Network processors are about a decade old now and they have become a fundamental and critical component in many high-end network systems and demanding network processing environments.

This chapter introduces this relatively new processing paradigm, and provide a high-level perspective of ...