Ericsson's New Network Processor - for Internal Use Only

Last week Ericsson announced the SNP 4000 network processing chipset (here).

In response to my question, Ericsson says that "it will use SNP 4000 for its IP portfolio and there are no plans to offer this to other vendors".

In addition, Ericsson states:

"The 4 key attributes of the 4GIP vision Ericsson launched in Feb 2011 were that networks should be smart, scalable, simple and provide superior performance to support the networked society where 24x7 connectivity at high speed cannot be compromised. Ericsson realized that one of the major issues with existing network processor units (NPUs) is the need to compromise between throughput and ability to run intelligent services. Therefore, Ericsson started the R&D activities to develop its fourth generation of NPU that can deliver Layer 2 through Layer 7 services, without any impact on the throughput. Another issue with traditional NPUs is that they are pipelined micro-coded, which has an impact on the ability to add high-touch applications quickly. Hence, SNP 4000 is a breakthrough in network processor technology, with a highly innovative hyper-threaded run to completion architecture running the Linux OS with full support for GNU based C/C++ tool chain".