As the demand for digital communication networks has increased, so have the challenges in network component design. To meet ever-escalating performance, flexibility, and economy requirements, the networking industry has opted to build products around network processors. These new chips range from task-specific processors, such as classification and encryption engines, to more general-purpose packet or communications processors. Programmable yet application-specific, their designs are tailored to efficiently implement communications applications such as routing, protocol analysis, voice and data convergence, firewalls, VPNs, and QoS.

Preface Chapter 1. Network Processors: An Introduction to Design Issues, Patrick Crowley, Mark Franklin, Haldun Hadimioglu, and Peter Onufryk Part 1. Design Principles Chapter 2. Benchmarking Network Processors, Prashant R. Chandra, Frank Hady, Raj Yavatkar, Tony Bock,Mason Cabot and Philip Mathew Chapter 3. A Methodology and Simulator for the Study of Network Processors, Deepak Suryanarayanan, Gregory T. Byrd and John Marshall Chapter 4. Design Space Exploration of Network Processor Architectures, Lothar Thiele, Samarjit Chakraborty, Matthias Gries and Simon Künzli Chapter 5. Compiler Back-end Optimizations for Network Processors with Bit Packet Addressing, Jens Wagner and Rainer Leupers Chapter 6. A Network Processor Performance and Design Model with Benchmark Parameterization, Mark A. Franklin and Tilman Wolf Chapter 7. A Benchmarking Methodology for Network Processors, Mel Tsai, Chidamber Kulkarni, Christian Sauer, Niraj Shah and Kurt Keutzer Chapter 8. A Modeling Framework for Network Processor Systems, Patrick Crowley and Jean-Loup Baer Part 2. Practices Chapter 9. An Industry Analyst's Perspective on Network Processors, John Freeman Chapter 10. Agere Systems - Communications Optimized PayLoadPlus Network Processor Architecture, Bill Klein Chapter 11. Cisco Systems - Toaster 2, John Marshall Chapter 12. IBM - PowerNP Network Processor, Mohammad Peyravian, Jean Calvignac and Ravi Sabhikhi Chapter 13. Intel Corporation - Intel ® IXP2400 Network Processor: A 2nd Generation Intel ® NPU, Prashant Chandra, Sridhar Lakshmanamurthy and Raj Yavatkar Chapter 14. Motorola - C5e Network Processor, Eran Cohen Strod and Patricia Johnson Chapter 15. PMC-Sierra, Inc - ClassiPI, Vineet Dujari, Remby Taas and Ajit Shelat Chapter 16 TranSwitch - ASPEN: Flexible Network Processing for Access Solutions, Subhash C. Roy