TABLE OF CONTENTS After reading through eight chapters of this book on the Intel Internet Exchange Architecture, you may still be asking yourself whether IXP2XXX network processors are up to the job of performing your application. You may have some questions:
How many tasks can an IXP2XXX network processor perform?
Which IXP2XXX network processor should I use?
What frequency IXP2XXX network processor should I use?
How much memory does my IXP2XXX based system need?
How much headroom does my IXP2XXX system have?
Answering these very important questions requires a bit of work, but isn t difficult. All you need to understand is some basic resource budgeting principles to accurately estimate performance. A network processor application is very different from a standard desktop application running on your PC. A word processing or spreadsheet application doesn t have to respond to a continuous stream of data or input stimulus and risk failing. Unlike real-time applications, the input stimuli for the desktop application that s you typing can merely slow down to allow the PC to catch up. For any background processing that s needed, you can always wait for your PC to respond, which isn t really catastrophic, although you might find it irritating in the short term and highly unproductive over the long term. The system does not fail due to a choked input stream, and it still can be productive.
The packet-processing work done by a highly sophisticated router is much different. The packets keep coming and...
