Generic Functions
In the generic role as a packet processor, a number of optimised features or functions are typically present in a network processor, these include:
- Pattern matching - the ability to find specific patterns of bits or bytes within packets in a packet stream.
- Key lookup for example, address lookup - the ability to quickly undertake a database lookup using a key (typically an address on a packet) to find a result, typically routing information.
- Computation
- Data bitfield manipulation - the ability to change certain data fields contained in the packet as it is being processed.
- Queue management - as packets are received, processed and scheduled to be sent onwards, they are stored in queues.
- Control processing - the micro operations of processing a packet are controlled at a macro level which involves communication and orchestration with other nodes in a system.
- Quick allocation and re-circulation of packet buffers.
Read more about this topic: Network Processor
Famous quotes containing the words generic and/or functions:
““Mother” has always been a generic term synonymous with love, devotion, and sacrifice. There’s always been something mystical and reverent about them. They’re the Walter Cronkites of the human race . . . infallible, virtuous, without flaws and conceived without original sin, with no room for ambivalence.”
—Erma Bombeck (20th century)
“Nobody is so constituted as to be able to live everywhere and anywhere; and he who has great duties to perform, which lay claim to all his strength, has, in this respect, a very limited choice. The influence of climate upon the bodily functions ... extends so far, that a blunder in the choice of locality and climate is able not only to alienate a man from his actual duty, but also to withhold it from him altogether, so that he never even comes face to face with it.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)