Netronome to build world’s highest performance flow processors on Intel 22nm technology

SANTA CLARA, USA: Netronome, the leading developer of flow processors, announced an extension of its strategic relationship with Intel Corp. in which Netronome’s next-generation flow processors will be manufactured on Intel’s leading 22nm process. Netronome will offer the world’s first flow processors based on Intel’s market-defining 3-D Tri-Gate transistor technology and will shatter system benchmarks for flow processor performance, power and cost in network and security applications.

“Access to the Intel Custom Foundry is a key differentiator for Netronome and enables them to take advantage of the industry-leading performance and power efficiency of Intel's 22nm 3-D Tri-Gate technology,” said Linley Gwennap, principal analyst at The Linley Group.

The agreement with Intel provides substantial benefits in several key areas to Netronome and its customers for market-leading flow processors:

State-of-the-Art Transistor Design: Coveted access to Intel’s revolutionary 22nm process featuring 3-D Tri-Gate transistors provides an unprecedented combination of improved performance and energy efficiency, both critical features to high-end networking designs.

Leading design and manufacturing practices: A tightly-coupled, joint development and manufacturing engagement model enables Netronome to take full advantage of Intel tools, processes, and proprietary modeling capabilities, thereby reducing development costs and time to market, while increasing product functionality.

Integrated Manufacturing Supply Chain for Product Quality and Reliability: Co-optimized Intel wafer foundry, device packaging, assembly and test procedures cost-effectively deliver the industry’s highest product quality through advanced Design for Manufacturing (DFM), Design for Test (DFT) and Design for Reliability (DFR) methodologies.

Risk Mitigation: Netronome’s access to Intel’s global footprint, spanning multiple foundries and geographies worldwide, will ensure an uninterrupted supply of Netronome products.

“Intel’s 3-D Tri-Gate transistor technology and 22nm manufacturing process provides significant benefits over legacy planar designs,” said Jim Finnegan, senior VP of engineering at Netronome. “As a result, our next generation flow processors will be several generations ahead of other communications processors, allowing Netronome to deliver up to 10-times the performance with more than triple the energy efficiency.”

"Intel is delighted to provide Netronome with access to its leading edge 3-D Tri-Gate 22nm technology and integrated supply chain,” said Sunit Rikhi, VP of the Technology and Manufacturing Group at Intel. “While working with Netronome during the product design cycle to co-optimize its flow processors and our foundry offerings, it was clear that Intel’s 22nm silicon technology and design infrastructure are a significant value-fit with Netronome’s products.”

Netronome’s flow processors (NFP) bring breakthrough performance to a broad range of demanding network, security and content processing applications used in high end networks with speeds up to 100Gbps. NFPs simultaneously deliver packet processing with deep packet inspection, security processing, and I/O virtualization for millions of simultaneous stateful flows. NFPs are the industry’s only processor specifically designed for tight coupling with Intel Architecture (IA) processors, complementing and strengthening the growing success of IA in networking, communications, and security applications.

Netronome’s current generation of flow processors began with a technology license agreement with Intel in November 2007, reaching volume-shipments in 2011. Netronome’s next-generation of processors based on Intel’s 22nm process and 3-D Tri-Gate transistors will sample in 2013.