nt platforms that are provided from third parties that support work for ARM CPUs. Switch Fabric Gasket i.e. Power X Tables Tables PCI 64-bit 4 Gbps 4 Gbps Queues 66MHz Queues QDR SRAM QDR SRAM Intel IXP2400 Intel IXP2400 QDR SRAM Receive Transmit QDR SRAM Processor Processor SDRAM SDRAM Packet memory Utopia Packet SPI-3 memory 2.5 or 4 Gbps 1x OC-48 4x OC-12 4x 1 GbE FIGURE 5.5 Typical architecture of an OC-48 system showing two IXP2400 network processors that are needed to handle the transmit and receive paths respectively. (Source: Intel) 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 INTEL IXA TM NETWORK PROCESSORS 85 External processors Control Plane Protocol Stacks Intel XScaleTM Control Plane PDK Core Components C/C++ Core Component Library languages Resource Manager Library Microblock Library Microengine pipeline Microblock Microblock Microblock Microengine C Language Protocol Library Utility Library Hardware Abstraction Layer (library) FIGURE 5.6 Software Architecture based on the Intel IXA TM Portability Framework. (Source: Intel) Intel also provides a core-control plane Platform Development Kit (PDK), which offers a com- mon interface and interconnect protocol for control plane stacks that may be running on external processors. SOFTWARE AND SYSTEMS DEVELOPMENT AROUND IXA ARCHITECTURE NPUS Intel IXA SDK offers an integrated environment with functionality that enables rapid code develop- ment and simulation for both control and data plane applications, with a choice of embedded operat- ing systems. It is supported by a comprehensive hardware platform. More specifically, the SDK contains several interesting tools: The Integrated Microengine Development Environment provides an integrated environment for the advanced graphical simulation, profiling, and debugging of a system working exclusively in soft- 