NetLogic Microsystems announced the availability of the XLP316T multi-core processor, which is optimized to deliver unparalleled performance and intelligence for the rapidly growing storage-area networking (SAN) and network-attached storage (NAS) markets in data center, enterprise and small-to-midsize business (SMB) networks. In a recent Microprocessor Report article, the XLP316T multi-core processor was reviewed as a device that will deliver far more throughput than competing processors at similar power levels.

The best-in-class XLP316T processor integrates 16 high-performance NXCPUs featuring a highly differentiated quad-issue, quad-threaded, superscalar out-of-order processor architecture capable of operating at up to 2.0 GHz to provide the industry's highest multi-core processing performance. In addition, the XLP316T processor, manufactured in TSMC's advanced 40nm process technology, offers unique features, such as RAID 5 and RAID 6 hardware acceleration, storage de-duplication acceleration, high-speed Serial ATA (SATA) interfaces and large on-chip L3 cache, making it ideally suited to storage systems that require the highest performance, functionality and lowest power.

The explosive growth in digital data and media content, coupled with the data center aggregation of enterprise and consumer digital storage for ease of accessibility and manageability, are driving the need for "storage in the cloud" services. Apple's iCloud and Amazon's S3 services, as well as corporate enterprise storage servers, are examples of a growing trend in the need for new levels of performance for network storage applications. In addition, the need for storage virtualization technology is driving the requirements for significantly higher multi-core processing performance while enhancing the energy efficiency of storage data centers.

"We are extremely excited about the strong momentum of our flagship XLP multi-core processor family into networking, LTE wireless and security markets, and are pleased to now expand our addressable market into storage appliances and network storage systems," said Chris O'Reilly, vice president of marketing at NetLogic Microsystems. "Having the industry's first and only quad-issue, quad-threaded multi-core processor with out-of-order execution in 40nm puts us a generation ahead of competitive solutions."

"The network-storage market represents a huge expansion of the market opportunity for NetLogic Microsystems' XLP processors," said Linley Gwennap, principal analyst at The Linley Group and editor-in-chief of Microprocessor Report. "We are impressed to see the company introduce several innovative multi-core processors targeting high-growth segments -- LTE base stations, LTE enhanced packet core, security appliances, control-plane processing and now network storage -- all in the last nine months."

To complement the 16 NXCPUs, the XLP316T multi-core processor offers fully-autonomous processing engines that provide independent and complete offload of certain network and storage functions from the NXCPUs, including:

-- 64 Gbps RAID-5/RAID-6 hardware acceleration

-- Storage De-Duplication hardware acceleration

-- 10 Gbps Security Acceleration Engines supporting encryption, decryption and authentication protocols for networking, wireless and storage applications

-- 20 Gbps Network Acceleration Engines for ingress/egress packet parsing and management

-- Packet Ordering Engines supporting 32k flows

-- TCP Segmentation Offload Engines

-- IEEE 1588 Hardware Time Stamping hardware acceleration

The XLP316T multi-core processor features NetLogic Microsystems' high-speed, low-latency Enhanced Fast Messaging Network to enable efficient, high-bandwidth communications among the 16 NXCPUs and to support billions of in-flight messages and packet descriptors among all the on-chip elements. The XLP316T processor offers a tri-level cache architecture with more than 6 Megabytes of fully coherent on-chip cache, which delivers 40 Terabits per second of extremely high-speed on-chip memory bandwidth. The XLP316T processor also incorporates two channels of 72-bit DDR3 interconnect that yields over 200 Gigabits per second of off-chip memory bandwidth.

The XLP316T processor also integrates a wide range of high-speed interfaces, including:

-- Serial ATA (4x)

-- PCI-Express Gen2 (2x8 or 4x4 or 1x4 configurations)

-- 10 Gigabit Ethernet XAUI (2 ports)

-- Gigabit Ethernet SGMII (8 lanes)

-- USB2.0 (4x)

NetLogic Microsystems' multi-core processor family is supported by a comprehensive software development kit (SDK) that contains reference and production-ready software components, which enables customers to accelerate time-to-market.