ARM has secured a significant multicore processor licence deal
in its bid to take on Intel and IBM on their home ground of
the networking and server markets.
Netronome, a US-based chip developer specialising in network flow
processors for virtualized servers, has licensed the ARM11 MPCore
multicore processor and a portfolio of ARM Physical IP for
incorporation into its NFP-32xx family of Network Flow
Processors.
ARM has made on secret of its ambition
to take on the processor architectures of Intel and
IBM in markets outside its traditional low
power mobile phone and industrial terminal markets.
Last year,
a report by
In-Stat pointed out that Intel was now
battling with ARM in addition to known adversaries—AMD and
IBM—making the next few years competitive for the silicon
giant.
Netronome is a licensee of Intel and significantly it expects the
ARM-based NFP-32xx devices to extend the performance and
application reach of the family of Intel IXP28xx products it
licensed in 2007.
Main telecoms and enterprise applications include line cards and
standalone communications appliances that perform tasks such as
protocol interworking, MAC emulation, Ethernet switching and
IPv4/IPv6 forwarding.
“The efforts of Partners such as Netronome have helped to increase
the ARM architecture’s presence in the networking market. This in
turn has driven an ecosystem of optimised software and tools to
enable innovative new applications,” said Ian Ferguson, director,
Enterprise Solutions, ARM.
The network flow processors (NFPs) are based on a parallel
processing architecture which supports wire-speed processing of
complex Layer 2-7 algorithms, security processing, deep packet
inspection and filtering, traffic management and forwarding
applications.
The company is going after the traditional market for packet switch
devices and network processors with more energy-efficient multicore
devices. “Our analysis has shown that the use of multicore
technology is the most power efficient way to scale wire-speed
performance,” said Jim Finnegan, senior vice president of silicon
engineering at Netronome.
The ARM11 MPCore processor will be used to process complex
algorithms, maintain route tables, manage system level functions
and perform control plane tasks.
Devices containing the ARM11 MPCore processor can be configured to
contain between one and four processors delivering up to an
aggregate 5000 Dhrystone MIPS of performance at 1GHz.
“With current concerns about energy efficiency and utilization,
the ability to perform wire-speed processing inside the power
envelope associated with mobile platforms offers significant
opportunities for OEM differentiation,” said Ferguson.
Netronome is also incorporating ARM High Speed Interface IP in
their design. The IP offers a physical interface and analogue
timing for SDRAM DDR (double-data rate) applications ranging from
high-speed mission critical applications to low-power memory
sub-systems.