d excitement that attracts a shower of competing ideas, lots of entrepre- neurial talent, and heavy investments usually in the form of venture capital disappears. Table 10-1 compares two Net ASIC product families that are offered by two major vendors. The choice between these families is a direct function of the user's application at hand. One of these prod- ucts has an edge in environments that combine Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) and IP traffic, whereas the other is much easier to interface with Ethernet and Gigabit Ethernet realms where it is more likely that only IP traffic will be transmitted. We will conclude our discussion about Net ASICs by highlighting a key industry fact: The tremen- dous programmability and flexibility of ordinary network-processor chip-based platforms in con- junction with free application code that network-processor chip vendors often offer to their customers place some dark clouds over the commercial viability of Net ASICs. Since the Net ASIC approach is questioned mostly for business reasons, it is not a surprise that as of this writing, major players in industry have announced that they will suspend their development efforts on Net ASICs and concen- trate their future development efforts on programmable network processors instead. DESIGNING WITH IP CORES Although IP-core-based network processing is not intended for mainstream users who are in search of solutions to the computational needs of their switching/routing project, we must discuss the approach taken by several companies to create state-of-the-art network-processing systems based on the use of intellectual property offered by third parties. 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. ALTERNATIVE APPROACHES TO NETWORK PROCESSING: NET ASICS AND DESIGNING WITH IP CORES ALTERNATIVE APPROACHES TO NETWORK PROCESSING: NET ASICS AND DESIGNING WITH IP 