tremendous promise in the network-processing field, which would be considered good. On the other hand, the network-processing IP from these specialized com- panies has a very limited marketability as no other companies outside the small network-processing realm are susceptible of using it. This is definitely not as good for the future prosperity of such com- panies. This can be a major concern for large networking original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) in search of a long-term partner. 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 CORES It should be obvious that small startups cannot often afford to use an IP core if they are not ade- quately funded. Of course, the counterargument is that if a company does not license technology from a third party, then it must develop it. Chances are that it will cost much more. Therefore, a company that is not funded for such an internal-development endeavor is simply not adequately funded. It prob- ably is severely undercapitalized and consequently facing extinction. This implies that the vast majority of potential customers for specialized high-performance, net- work-processing IP technology are large established network equipment vendors (NEVs) or extremely well-funded and staffed startups (a rarity these days), who for various technical or business reasons, are not satisfied with the available network-processor chip architectures and would rather contemplate designing their own fast networking ASIC's one way or the other. However, this is not a big market for an IP company. This fact raises the issue of the mere survival and future prosperity of companies that choose this avenue as their business model. It is not a coincidence that once key