Netronome is revealed as ARM multiprocessor licensor

LONDON — Netronome Systems Inc. (Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania), a developer of network processors, has been announced by ARM Holdings plc (Cambridge, England) as a licensor of the ARM11-MP processor core and a portfolio of physical IP that has been used in the NFP-32xx family of processors.

The NFP-32xx, based on an array of 40 multithreaded networking cores, is designed for unified computing architectures by combining high-performance network, content and security processing with I/O virtualization. It is intended to speed up the processing of Layer 2 to Layer 7 algorithms, security processing, deep packet inspection and filtering, traffic management and forwarding applications.

The NFP-32xx family of devices extends the performance and application reach of the family of Intel IXP28xx products licensed by Netronome in November 2007, while preserving the software compatibility with existing IXP28xx 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, in a statement issued by ARM.

"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 Ian Ferguson, director of enterprise solutions at ARM, in the same statement.

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