Intel IXC1100, IXP42X 4.0 Network Processor Engines (NPE)

Intel® IXP42X product line and IXC1100 control plane processors—Network Processor Engines
(NPE)
Intel® IXP42X Product Line of Network Processors and IXC1100 Control Plane Processor
DM September 2006
202 Order Number: 252480-006US
4.0 Network Processor Engines (NPE)
The Network Processor Engines (NPE) are dedicated function processors containing
hardware co-processors that are integrated into the Intel® IXP42X Product Line of
Network Processors and IXC1100 Control Plane Processor. The NPEs are used to off
load processing functions required by the Intel XScale® Processor.
The Network Processor Engines are high-performance, hardware multi-threaded
processors with additional local hardware assist functionality used to off load processor
intensive functions such as MII (MAC), CRC checking/generation, AAL2, DES, 3DES,
AES, SHA-1, MD-5, etc.
Note: Certain NPEs are not available — depending on which of the IXP42X product line and
IXC1100 control plane processors is used. Tab le 94 shows which network-processor
models have these NPEs available.
All instruction code for the NPEs is stored locally with a dedicated instruction memory
bus and dedicated data memory bus. These engines support processing of dedicated
peripherals interfaces on the IXP42X product line and IXC1100 control plane
processors. The peripherals supported by the use of the NPEs are the 2-MII interfaces,
UTOPIA-2 interface, and two high-speed serial interfaces.
The NPE core is a hardware multi-threaded processor engine that is used to accelerate
functions that are difficult to achieve high performance in a standard RISC processor.
Each NPE core is a 133-MHz processor core that contains self-contained instruction
memory and self-contained data memory that operate in parallel.
In addition to having separate instruction/data memory and local code store, the NPE
core supports hardware multi-threading with support for multiple contexts. The support
of hardware multi-threading allows an efficient processor engine with minimal
processor stalls due to the ability of the processor core to switch context to a new
context in a single clock cycle based upon a prioritized/preemptive basis.
The prioritized/preemptive nature of the context switching allows time critical
applications to be implemented in a low-latency fashion, which is required when
processing multi-media applications. The NPE core also connects several hardware-
based co-processors. The co-processors are used to implement several functions that
Table 94. Network Processor Functions
Device UTOPIA HSS MII 0 MII 1 AES / DES /
3DES Multi-Channel HDLC SHA-1 / MD-5
IXP425 X X X X X 8 X
IXP423 X X X X 8
IXP422 X X X X
IXP421 X X X 8
IXP420 X X
IXC1100 X X