 to handle network-processing tasks, no discussion has taken place about any type of software support from the core vendor. Even the company's latest M4K core, which has been touted as configurable and extensible, has significant functional issues when it comes down to these two dimensions of usefulness. It also performance issues as it can only attain 200 to 250 MHz at best in a 0.13um complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) technology. This compares poorly with Tensilica's numbers, which we discuss later in the chapter. More specifically, it has the following extensibility and configurability issues: The MIPS M4K core does not provide support for additional registers and additional register files. The configuration/extension capabilities are not automated but manual, requiring RTL coding and tool modification, which is tedious and also error prone. It does not offer real-time operating system support for extensions. As we mentioned earlier, IP cores are only licensed by companies that can financially afford them and that will use them in their own design of integrated circuits. The licensing of a typical IP core CPU is usually negotiable, but it usually implies a licensing fee of a half to 1 million U.S. dollars, which must be paid in advance. It also entails a scaled structure of royalties usually based on a small percentage of the chip sales, which the licensee will realize over several years with the use of the tech- nology. There are several variations on the same theme. A company usually licenses an IP core either for a single design use or for multiple design uses, but the fundamentals of the business model remain unchanged-it involves a significant license fee up front and royalties. In the embedded network-processing arena, however, MIPS is not confronted just with NPU chip vendors. Some IP core companies compete squarely by the mere prowess of their IP technology, which has been designed modularly for scalability and performance at wire speeds. On one hand, IP from these companies seems to hold 