NetLogic begins revenue shipments of XLP multi-core processor into $1.5 billion control plane market

SANTA CLARA, USA: NetLogic Microsystems Inc. has started revenue shipments for its recently introduced XLP multi-core processors into the communications control plane market, which is estimated at approximately $1.5 billion. The control plane processing application represents a new market for NetLogic Microsystems’ XLP family of multi-core processors as previous generations of XLR and XLS families of processors were primarily targeted at the data plane processing market.

Demands on control plane processors have been increasing rapidly as these processors are tasked with configuring and managing ever-faster and more-complex networks. Control plane processors today must deliver increasingly better single-threaded performance to handle larger amounts of complex application software, and to manage security policies and signaling protocols in wireless infrastructure and network topology management in switching and routing platforms.

The XLP multi-core processor is specifically designed to meet these requirements, with a best-in-class communications processor architecture supporting quad-issue, superscalar out-of-order execution, floating point processing, sophisticated branch handling and large on-chip caching. As a result of these advanced features, the XLP processor delivers highly competitive, leading-edge single-threaded performance for the most demanding control plane applications.

Since the introduction of the XLP multi-core processor family in late 2010, 80 percent of NetLogic Microsystems’ leading customers are already actively designing with the XLP multi-core processors. These customers are designing the best-in-class XLP multi-core communications processors into advanced service blades, edge routers, metro Ethernet aggregation equipment, LTE base stations, wireless core gateways and network controllers, cloud-server NICs, datacenter switches, enterprise switches, storage appliances and mid-range and high-end security appliances for Layer 7 deep packet inspection and network security.

“The design win momentum and broad market acceptance of the XLP product family underscores the value of its highly differentiated architecture and the need for more robust processing capabilities at nearly every point in the network,” said Chris O’Reilly, VP of marketing at NetLogic Microsystems.

“Building upon our multi-core success in data plane applications, we are particularly pleased by the rapid proliferation of control plane designs, where the XLP’s state-of-the-art performance and feature set is perfectly aligned with the increasingly rigorous requirements of next-generation equipment. Through the introduction of new XLP-based products that address the needs of high-end and mainstream applications, we continue to significantly grow our addressable market and open up exciting new opportunities for revenue and market share growth.”

NetLogic Microsystems’ breakthrough XLP multi-core processor architecture offers unparalleled processing performance with scalability up to 128 NXCPUs, each operating at up to 2.0 GHz and based on a best-in-class superscalar engine and out-of-order execution capabilities for converged data plane and control plane processing. The XLP multi-core processor, which is manufactured in the advanced 40nm process node, offers full cache and memory coherency over the high-speed Inter-chip Coherency Interface (ICI), enabling software applications to seamlessly run in Symmetric Multi Processing (SMP) or Asymmetric Multi Processing (AMP) modes.

The XLP multi-core processor solution is designed to deliver an unprecedented 160Gbps throughput and 240 million packets-per-second (Mpps) of intelligent application performance for next-generation 3G/4G mobile wireless infrastructure, enterprise, storage, security, metro Ethernet, edge and core infrastructure network applications.