ware. It enables development engineers to create prototypes quickly, and intuitively optimize and support data for both data and control plane applications. The transactor from this tool resolves con- currency issues by simulating packets going in and out of the network processor. It can be used to gather statistics. It can also aid in creating and verifying the architectural design and by providing a fine level of internal detail, including pipeline execution stages. In other words, it can pinpoint things and situations that would not be visible otherwise. 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. INTEL IXA TM NETWORK PROCESSORS 86 NETWORK PROCESSORS Intel's Microengine C compiler facilitates code development for the microengines and improves time to market. The SDK is provided with support for the Wind RiverTM Vx Works and MontaVistaTM Linux oper- ating systems, whereas the IXA environment also provides support for other third-party embedded operating systems. The provided libraries shorten the development cycle as part of the IXA Portability Framework by offering the systems designer some critical chunks of infrastructure software that is pretested and validated. Intel's customers can embed these blocks of quality code into their own software flow to deliver their intended application more quickly and reliably. A comprehensive suite of completed building blocks and sample applications further improve the customer's software development through the use of common networking building blocks. In order to complement the development environment, Intel also provides several hardware devel- opment platforms for the parallel development of hardware simultaneously with the software. These standard-form platforms enable processing performance among other realms at OC-48 (2.5 Gbps) and OC-192 (10 Gbps) wire speeds. SYSTEMS CONSIDERATIONS AND TR