Network Processors: Architectures, Protocols and Platforms

NETWORK PROCESSORS "UNDER THE HOOD"

Written with insight by a leading telecommunications chip industry veteran, Network Processor: Architectures, Protocols, and Platforms delivers an eye-opening "whole picture" look at the revolution in high-speed network equipment and provides a unique top-to-bottom review of more than 20 network processing platforms (including NP chips and coprocessors). With Network Processors, you will:

* Get a clear detailed look at all NPs commercially available through mid-2003

* Learn how and why NP architectures differ from classical CPUs

* Plan for a new generation of chips used in routers and switches

* Understand the specific design trade-offs entailed by each new NP

* Understand how to evaluate platforms and architectures while being cognizant of inevitable market forces affecting NP vendors

* Understand and prepare for the issues associated with rapidly developing reusable networking software for these new processors

* Save time with a handy down-to-earth reference that, unlike other books on the subject, does not limit itself to only one company's approach or engage in abstract scholarly discussions that are not useful for an engineer's or manager's everyday reality

* Get wide view coverage of this new technology followed by directions for deeper, more specialized implementation based on your own needs

A PRACTICAL EDUCATION IN NETWORK PROCESSORS:

* Why Network Processors?

* IBM PowerNP(tm) Architecture

* Intel IXA(tm) Architecture

* AMCC nP(tm) Family of Network Processors

* Agere PayloadPlus(R) Family of Network Processors

* Motorola C-Port(R) Family of Network Processors

* Other NPU Architectures

* Alternatives to NPUs: Net ASICs & Designing with IP Cores

* Switch Fabrics

* Searcg Engines and Content-Addressable Memory (CAM)

* Classification Processors

* Traffic Managers

* Storage Coprocessors and TCP Offload Engines

* Security Coprocessors

* Systems Engineering and Software Development Issues

A MUST READ FOR:

* Hardware engineers who develop networking equipment

* Softwre engineers who code network software

* Communications chip designers

* Systems Architects or integrators

* Managers who need the facts

* Consultants

NETWORK PROCESSORS "UNDER THE HOOD"

Panos Lekkas has been intensely active in the industry for more than 20 years and is currently the Founder and President of Xstream Technologies LLC in Boston, Massachusetts. Lekkas is involved in advanced technology and business development in the areas of network processing, broadband optical and RF wireless communications security, and neural computing. Lekkas is known for his expert technology advisory role for both government and leading hi-tech companies, as well as for top-of-the-line investment banks and venture capital companies. His combined experience in both technology and business development worldwide has been applied to projects involving introduction of new technologies, performing due diligence process and technology evaluation for clients, as well as conducting valuation and sale of companies and technology assets to prospective corporate acquirers. His company has also been developing a series of patents and intellectural property that it licenses and it also provides turnkey solutions in projects involving communications systems analysis/simulation/development, VLSI/SOC architecture design, FPGA prototyping, and development of embedded software.

Lekkas started his career as a VLSI engineer with Silvar-Lisco and he rose to supervise the company's European applications engineering group. He joined IBM in the early 1980s. Among several positions he was Leading Architect & Systems Engineer in Austin, Texas, in charge of processor and memory management architecture and he has been instrumental in IBM's successful worldwide introduction of the RISC architecture, which ultimately evolved to become the heart of the renown IBM RS/6000 supercomputers. Lekkas has held several positions in advanced technology development and technical marketing management with IBM in both the United States and Europe.

After he left IBM and before starting Xstream Technologies, Lekkas has held positions as CTO & Technology Division General Manager of THLC in Marlboro, Mass., a fabless semiconductor company in the area of high-speed communications security where he built the engineering division by a series of mergers and acquisitions while hands-on leading the development of the company's highly complex ASIC product in collaboration with IBM Microelectronics; Co-Founder, President/CEO of wirelessEncryption.com Inc., a Burlington, Mass. fabless semiconductor company where he invented and started developing a patented streaming communications security technology that culminated to a multimillion dollar IPO; VP Engineering at ACI, a Hudson, Mass. fabless semiconductor company designing advanced communications ASICs; Director of Business Development with TCC, in Concord, Mass. where he further built and supervised the in-house cryptography team, participating in industry-standards bodies, and having led the product definition for systems destined for military and intelligence communications including link- and protocol-sensitive encryptors for the industry; Director of International Technical Sales & Applications Engineering with Galileo Corp. where he pioneered the introduction of their WDM (wavelength division multiplexing) and praseodymium-doped-fluoride fiber telecom amplifier communications technology and where he increased by 10 times the Japanese business of the company within two years. At Galileo he had the establishment of the company's electro-optics technologies as a de facto standard worldwide in the fields of lithography, scanning electron microscopy, and surface analysis for semiconductor equipment manufacturers and he was instrumental in the effort to diversify the fiberoptics-based coherent-imaging business division from heads-up avionics displays to medical markets that revolutionalized the ways minimally invasive surgery is conducted. Before that, Lekkas had also set up and run successfull