which was lacking from the initial product launches in this family, is a valuable addition that can dramatically simplify PowerNP application code development. It is especially use- ful for creating prototypes of an application quickly. This optimizing C compiler implements a sub- set of ANSI C and provides a set of APIs to access onboard coprocessors. It also supports inline assembly to allow hand optimization of critical sections of the code during the fine-tuning process of a finished product. An important factor from a business standpoint is that IBM actually delivers code that the cus- tomers can do two things with. They can keep it as is, concentrating their efforts on developing their application or supervising software (which is the most typical case) in cases where their software will be meant to run on the CP while leaving the internals of the NPU software intact. On the other hand, in more elaborate cases where fine-tuning is required, they can modify the picocode to produce the desired and intended behavior and performance. IBM provides handholding from authoring device drivers all the way to full-fledged hardware/software design validation and consultation. With NPAS, IBM's customers can license production-quality infrastructure, control, protocol, or forwarding soft- ware. NPAS contains numerous components that vary from MPLS to IPv4 over SONET, from 802. 1D bridging and 802.1Q VLANs all the way to File Transfer Protocol (FTP), Transmission Control Protocol (TCP), and Point-to-Point Protocol (PPP) implementations, from full-fledged DiffServ to simply handling jumbo frames on Gigabit Ethernet, from management information base (MIB) sup- port to unicast/multicast filtering/forwarding of IPv4 on Ethernet, etc. Besides the data plane processing, IBM's basic and advanced software offerings provide strong support for control plane development for both internal PowerPC and external choices of a CP proces- sor. Code is readily available for boot, system management, diagnostic services, interface manage- men