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Intel
®
IXP42X product line and IXC1100 control plane processors—Overview of Product Line
Intel
®
IXP42X Product Line of Network Processors and IXC1100 Control Plane Processor
DM September 2006
38 Order Number: 252480-006US
2.1.1.7 Intel XScale
®
Processor Performance Monitoring
Two performance-monitoring counters have been added to the Intel XScale processor
that can be configured to monitor various events in the Intel XScale processor. These
events allow a software developer to measure cache efficiency, detect system
bottlenecks, and reduce the overall latency of programs.
For more details, see “Performance Monitoring” on page 133 and Section 11.0,
“Internal Bus Performance Monitoring Unit (IBPMU)” on page 372.
2.2 Network Processor Engines (NPE)
The network processor engines are dedicated function processors integrated into many
of the IXP42X product line and IXC1100 control plane processors to off load processing
function required by the Intel XScale processor. Table 2 specifies which devices, of the
IXP42X product line and IXC1100 control plane processors, have which of these
capabilities.
The network processor engines are high-performance, hardware-multi-threaded
processors. All instruction code is stored locally with a dedicated instruction-memory
bus. These engines support processing of the dedicated peripherals. The peripherals
supported using the network processor engines are the following interfaces:
•up to 2 MII
•UTOPIA Level-2
•up to 2 HSS
The combined forces of the hardware multi-threading, local code store, independent
instruction memory, and parallel processing allows the Intel XScale processor to be
utilized purely for application purposes. This parallel processing of the peripheral
interface functions allows unsurpassed performance to be achieved by the application
running on the IXP42X product line and IXC1100 control plane processors.
For further information on the network processor engines, see Section 4.0, “Network
Processor Engines (NPE)” on page 202.
Table 2. Network Processor Functions
Device UTOPIA HSS MII 0 MII 1
AES / DES
/ 3DES
Multi-
Channel
HDLC
SHA-1 /
MD-5
Intel
®
IXP425 Network
Processor
XXXX X 8 X
Intel
®
IXP423 Network
Processor
XXXX 8
Intel
®
IXP422 Network
Processor
XX X X
Intel
®
IXP421 Network
Processor
XXX 8
Intel
®
IXP420 Network
Processor
XX
Intel
®
IXC1100 Control Plane
Processor
XX