SCIENCE

NetLogic Microsystems has announced that it has become a member of the Network Intelligence Alliance (NI Alliance), a new industry organization created for collaboration among the networking technology providers.

In today's Network Economy -- a world that now depends and runs on networks -- accurate visibility and precise tracking of data crossing networks has become crucial to the availability, performance and security of applications and services. The growing complexity of IP transactions, the explosion of mobile applications, and the mainstream adoption of cloud computing surpass the capabilities of conventional tools to improve how networks operate, expand services and police illicit or criminal activity. Just like Business Intelligence solutions emerged to unlock information hidden in the enterprise, Network Intelligence technology is an emerging category of technology to reveal the critical details of the data locked inside network traffic and transactions.

The NI Alliance serves as a forum for collaboration among technology providers whose solutions secure data in transit, ensure efficient data delivery, monetize data transactions or track real-time information. The NI Alliance also seeks to educate the market and the public on the role and value of Network Intelligence in protecting sensitive information; delivering value-added services, applications and information; and ensuring better performance of network-dependent solutions.

NetLogic Microsystems supports the NI Alliance with its industry-leading multi-core, multi-threaded processors, knowledge-based processors and high-speed 10/40/100Gigabit Ethernet PHY products. These products from NetLogic Microsystems perform highly differentiated tasks of accelerating complex network traffic to significantly enhance the performance and functionality of advanced 3G/4G mobile wireless infrastructure, data center, enterprise, metro Ethernet, edge and core infrastructure networks. NetLogic Microsystems' best-in-class products are designed into high-performance systems such as switches, routers, wireless base stations, security appliances, networked storage appliances, service gateways and connected media devices offered by leading original equipment manufacturers (OEMs).

"We are pleased to become a member of the Network Intelligence Alliance and support the community of innovators and developers focused on delivering products for next-generation networks," said Chris O'Reilly, vice president of marketing at NetLogic Microsystems. "Delivering state-of-the-art multi-core processor, knowledge-based processor and 10/40/100GE PHY solutions with network intelligent capabilities is critical to the deployment of advanced LTE and IPv6 networks."

NetLogic Microsystems' XLP processor family features the industry's first and only quad-issue, quad-threaded communications processor architecture in the advanced 40nm process with unparalleled processing performance and scalability up to 128 NXCPUs. Each NXCPU operates at up to 2.0 GHz and is based on a best-in-class superscalar engine and out-of-order execution capabilities for converged data plane and control plane processing. The multi-core, multi-threaded processor offers a tri-level cache architecture with over 50 Mbytes of fully coherent on-chip cache which delivers 40 Terabits/sec of extremely high-speed on-chip memory bandwidth. The integrated high-speed Inter-chip Coherency Interface (ICI) offers full cache and memory coherency across the 128 NXCPUs, enabling software applications to seamlessly run in Symmetric Multi Processing (SMP) or Asymmetric Multi Processing (AMP) modes. The unique combination of superior processor cores with scalability to 128 NXCPUs and over 160 programmable processing engines deliver over 160Gbps throughput and 240 million packets per second (Mpps) of intelligent application processing performance, making it the industry's highest performance multi-core communications processors for intelligent Layers 4 - 7 network, services and application processing.

"We welcome industry leader, NetLogic Microsystems, to the NI Alliance," said Erik Larsson, Chairman of the NI Alliance. "The NI Alliance is about collaborative innovation with companies like NetLogic Microsystems that play a leadership role in multi-core processor products."

Establishment of the NI Alliance was initiated by Qosmos, whose Network Intelligence technology components provide the crucial first step in understanding what is passing through networks. Qosmos' hardware and software components extract and interpret real-time traffic -- translating a data stream's 1s and 0s into their respective communications protocols, metadata and content for use by third-party applications.

Through the NI Alliance, Qosmos expands its collaborative approach to help vendors design and deliver advanced solutions with embedded Network Intelligence technology in less time and at lower cost. The NI Alliance provides a channel for dialogue and partnerships that Alliance Members otherwise may not have considered or pursued when addressing the needs of joint customers. Visibility within the vendor community through the NI Alliance affords companies opportunities to market more comprehensive solutions with greater ROI and faster time to market for customers.