NetLogic begins volume shipments for industry-leading IPv6 knowledge-based processors

SANTA CLARA, USA: NetLogic Microsystems Inc. has launched volume shipments for its industry-leading NL10k and NL11k families of advanced knowledge-based processors, optimized to manage the significantly greater requirements of Internet Protocol Version 6 (IPv6) processing in next-generation switches and routers.

The first of these IPv6 customer systems to adopt NetLogic Microsystems’ advanced 40nm knowledge-based processors has begun volume production this quarter, and the company expects that an additional 60 customer programs at more than 17 customers will start their production ramps in the fourth quarter of 2011 and throughout 2012.

The exhaustion of IPv4 Internet addresses, driven by the proliferation of connected mobile devices, is forcing service providers and network owners to migrate to the new IPv6 Internet addressing scheme, resulting in an increase of IPv6 traffic across carrier and enterprise networks. Therefore, current system designs are typically supporting up to 33 percent of native IPv6 traffic, a major upgrade from previous generations of IPv4 equipment. This represents approximately double the content of knowledge-based processing per system to support the 4x increase in Internet protocol address widths and the exponential increase in the complexity and throughputs of network traffic.

The combination of the IPv6 migration and the rapid upgrades of networking and telecommunications equipment to 100Gbps line rates has led to an unprecedented demand for the most advanced and valuable knowledge-based processors from NetLogic Microsystems. These best-in-class 40nm knowledge-based processors have been designed by leading customers into next-generation switches, routers, metro aggregation equipment and 3G/4G LTE mobile gateways. NetLogic Microsystems has started shipping production volume to the first Tier One customer, and has shipped pre-production units to over two dozen other customers.

“The industry move to 100Gbps and IPv6 is leading to what we expect to be the fastest and broadest ramp of our knowledge-based processors in our history as customers are demanding the absolute highest performance devices from us,” said Chris O’Reilly, VP of marketing at NetLogic Microsystems. “We are pleased to continue to lead the market in breakthrough innovations and product advancements that continue to expand our market and technical leadership in knowledge-based processing.”

NetLogic Microsystems offers the industry’s broadest and most innovative portfolio of high-performance knowledge-based processors that are optimized for IPv6 processing. The NL11k processor family adopts an innovative “hybrid” architecture that combines its best-in-class, massively parallel knowledge-based processing engines with the low-power efficiency and flexibility of its algorithmic Sahasra technology to dramatically reduce power consumption while delivering unparalleled performance, capacity and scalability.

These best-in-class knowledge-based processors deliver up to 1.6 billion decisions per second of IPv6 processing while maintaining compatibility to previous generations of knowledge-based processors to allow OEMs to leverage existing software and ASIC investments while upgrading to IPv6. They feature up to 256 high-performance knowledge-based processing engines, and include an enhanced Intelligent Load Balancing Engine to efficiently allocate multiple tasks.

The 40nm knowledge-based processors also include the second generation of Sahasra algorithmic technology which provides 3.5x higher performance for IPv6 forwarding applications, allowing NetLogic Microsystems to address 50 percent of the search processing TAM that is currently dominated by in-house algorithmic solutions. NetLogic Microsystems’ portfolio of IPv6-optimized knowledge-based processors also features a version with the industry’s first high-speed serial interface that delivers 225 Gbps of raw chip-to-chip interconnect bandwidth.

This represents a 340 percent increase in I/O bandwidth-per-pin over parallel interfaces to deliver an improved balance between the processing engines and the I/O performance to allow wider IPv6 keys to be processed at the same search rate as narrower IPv4 keys. This enables significantly higher system performance and system density for next-generation systems to enable significantly richer services for LTE, IPTV and IPv6 equipment.

Manufactured in the advanced 40nm process node, the NL11k and NL10k knowledge-based processors also integrate an innovative Range Encoding Engine (REE), which employs advanced one-hot and fence encoding algorithms to implement range encoding that allows customers to effectively double the efficiency of performing port range inspection.