Santa Clara, Calif. – May 2, 2011 –NetLogic Microsystems, Inc. [NASDAQ: NETL], a worldwide leader in high-performance intelligent semiconductor solutions for next-generation Internet networks, today announced the introduction of the newest member of its XLP® processor family, the XLP316 processor which features a best-in-class quad-core, 16-issue, 16-threaded, superscalar processor architecture at up to 2.0GHz with out-of-order execution and superior L3 cache to address the most demanding control-plane processing requirements in communications, networking, storage and security applications.
Control-plane processing requirements in 3G/4G LTE mobile infrastructure are increasing exponentially due to the significant growth in signaling traffic from smartphones and tablets. Always-on mobile broadband applications that run on these data-centric devices make frequent connections to the network to check for updates to emails and social networking sites, as well as to perform other background processes. The accumulation of these frequent bursts of signaling traffic is placing an unprecedented burden on control-plane processing that requires new levels of processing horsepower while maximizing energy efficiency in next-generation mobile infrastructure equipment.
In addition, the industry migration to IPv6 networking, driven by the exhaustion of IPv4 addresses, is creating significantly higher control-plane processing requirements. Because IPv6 generates over 28 orders of magnitude more Internet addresses than its predecessor, this dramatically increases the burden on control-plane processing to manage and update the complex IPv6 databases.
NetLogic Microsystems’ innovative XLP316 processor is ideally suited to address new levels of control-plane performance requirements by combining a powerful multi-core processor architecture with a high-performance floating point unit and a low latency tri-level cache architecture. When compared to competing quad-core processors with dual-issue and single-threading per core, in-order execution and missing L3 cache, the XLP316 delivers up to 400% higher control-plane processing performance, which enables original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) to develop advanced, scalable systems for next-generation LTE and IPv6 networks.
“Having the industry’s only quad-issue, quad-threaded communications processor family with on-chip L3 cache gives us an enormous competitive advantage to address the most demanding control-plane processing requirements,” said Chris O’Reilly, vice president of marketing at NetLogic Microsystems. “The combination of the superior and highly optimized architecture along with the advanced 40nm process gives us further advantage in delivering the lowest power profile to meet our customers’ stringent requirements.”
NetLogic Microsystems’ XLP316 multi-core processor integrates 16 NXCPUs™ which are fully cache and memory coherent for software applications to seamlessly run in Symmetric Multi Processing (SMP) or Asymmetric Multi Processing (AMP) modes. The 16 NXCPUs are efficiently interconnected via NetLogic Microsystems’ high-speed, low-latency Enhanced Fast Messaging Network™ to support billions of in-flight messages and packet descriptors between all on-chip elements. The XLP316 multi-core processor offers a tri-level cache architecture with 4 Mbytes of L3 cache and over 6 Mbytes of fully coherent on-chip cache which delivers 40 Terabits per second (Tbps) of extremely high-speed on-chip memory bandwidth. The XLP316 processor also incorporates one channel of 72-bit DDR3 interconnect that yields over 100 Gbps of off-chip memory bandwidth.
In addition, the XLP316 multi-core processor integrates a wide range of high-speed networking interfaces, including:
- PCI-Express® Gen2 4×1 or 1×4
- Eight Gigabit Ethernet (SGMII) channels
- Dual XAUI ports
- USB2.0
- XEN Hypervisor virtualization and I/O virtualization (SR-IOV)
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.
NetLogic Microsystems is now accepting orders for the XLP316 processors with standard lead times.
About NetLogic Microsystems
NetLogic Microsystems, Inc. (NASDAQ: NETL) is a worldwide leader in high-performance intelligent semiconductor solutions that are powering next-generation Internet networks. NetLogic Microsystems’ best-in-class products 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’ market-leading product portfolio includes high-performance multi-core processors, knowledge-based processors, content processors, network search engines, ultra low-power embedded processors and high-speed 10/40/100 Gigabit Ethernet PHY solutions. These 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). NetLogic Microsystems is headquartered in Santa Clara, California, and has offices and design centers throughout North America, Asia and Europe. For more information about products offered by NetLogic Microsystems, call +1-408-454-3000 or visit the NetLogic Microsystems Web site at http://www.netlogicmicro.com.
