y are doing well, how they go about doing it, and why their performance is SO superior to other archi- tectural paradigms. We will also look at what differentiates each different approach taken by major design houses and semiconductor manufacturers, and we will look at the trade-offs and position of various predominant architectures. Downloaded from Digital Engineering Library @ McGraw-Hill (www.digitalengineeringlibrary.com) Copyright © 2004 The McGraw-Hill Companies. All rights reserved. Any use is subject to the Terms of Use as given at the website. THE EVOLUTION OF NETWORK TECHNOLOGY: DISTRIBUTED COMPUTING AND THE CONVERGENCE OF NETWORKS Downloaded from Digital Engineering Library @ McGraw-Hill (www.digitalengineeringlibrary.com) Copyright © 2004 The McGraw-Hill Companies. All rights reserved. Any use is subject to the Terms of Use as given at the website. Source: NETWORK PROCESSORS CHAPTER 2 NETWORK PROCESSORS: JUSTIFICATION In the previous chapter, we learned how the evolving landscapes in the computer, communications, and semiconductor industries have created a revolution that is built around the insatiable demand by users for global connectivity, applications portability, and user mobility. Users want technology that can be accessible anytime and anywhere. We also saw how these new demands translate into a con- vergence of the telephony and data networks with the Internet. Ever-increasing requirements for decreased costs, enhanced network performance and availability, and a new market framework where notions such as broadband speed, quality of service (QoS), and pay per use are now more important. This remarkably rapid evolution has caused the arrival of network processors. We will elaborate on this evolution and explain why it occurred. First we will define and categorize network processors. Based on their classification, we will describe what functions they are able to perform, in which con- text, and why. Most importantly, we will explain the unique advantage that network processors bring to both the u