Network processors: a perspective on market requirements, processor architectures and embedded S/W tools

With the projected explosion of low-cost bandwidth availability, the intensive processing tasks and service hosting will move close to consumers on the "intelligent edge" of the network, where a significant portion of the future storage, processing and network management will take place. We address the rationale for this change, the characteristics of the network processor architecture required to address it, and the software development tools needed in order to improve time-to-market without sacrificing embedded software performance.