Chapter 11. Specialized hardware components
Abstract:
Network systems use embedded processing systems to implement the necessary protocol processing steps performed on network traffic. Commonly, these embedded processors are based on system-on-chip technology. There is tension between performance and flexibility with respect to the design of these packet processing systems. That is, network processors use multiple parallel processor cores to implement packet forwarding and can be reprogrammed by updating software. In contrast, hardware accelerators provide a fixed set of functions but achieve higher performance than software. In addition, numerous system parameters affect the performance and efficiency of a packet processing system. This chapter ...

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