NetLogic intros industry’s most powerful multi-core control-plane processor for LTE communications infrastructure

SANTA CLARA, USA: NetLogic Microsystems Inc. has introduced the newest member of its XLP processor family, the XLP316 processor which features a best-in-class quad-core, 16-issue, 16-threaded, superscalar processor architecture at up to 2.0GHz with out-of-order execution and superior L3 cache to address the most demanding control-plane processing requirements in communications, networking, storage and security applications.

Control-plane processing requirements in 3G/4G LTE mobile infrastructure are increasing exponentially due to the significant growth in signaling traffic from smartphones and tablets. Always-on mobile broadband applications that run on these data-centric devices make frequent connections to the network to check for updates to emails and social networking sites, as well as to perform other background processes.

The accumulation of these frequent bursts of signaling traffic is placing an unprecedented burden on control-plane processing that requires new levels of processing horsepower while maximizing energy efficiency in next-generation mobile infrastructure equipment.

In addition, the industry migration to IPv6 networking, driven by the exhaustion of IPv4 addresses, is creating significantly higher control-plane processing requirements. Because IPv6 generates over 28 orders of magnitude more Internet addresses than its predecessor, this dramatically increases the burden on control-plane processing to manage and update the complex IPv6 databases.

NetLogic Microsystems’ innovative XLP316 processor is ideally suited to address new levels of control-plane performance requirements by combining a powerful multi-core processor architecture with a high-performance floating point unit and a low latency tri-level cache architecture. When compared to competing quad-core processors with dual-issue and single-threading per core, in-order execution and missing L3 cache, the XLP316 delivers up to 400 percent higher control-plane processing performance, which enables original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) to develop advanced, scalable systems for next-generation LTE and IPv6 networks.