The Next Big Innovation in Microprocessors: Anant Agarwal (Part 13)

Here we begin to examine the current market segments where the multicore processors are having a significant impact. The two major markets are networking and multimedia applications.

SM: Coming back to where your applications are – complex networking applications, and multimedia, right? AA: I don’t know if you want to use the word complex, because there are very simple applications which need lots of performance. The very juicy markets are not necessarily complex.

The two largest markets we serve, we serve with a general purpose embedded processor – the networking market and the digital video market. In both of these markets, we have the words “highest performance”.

In the networking market all networks are becoming more intelligent. In the past, people simply switched packets. What is happening now is that switches and routers are all looking to become intelligent. At every port, where previously a packet would come out, you want to put processing right next to it so that when the packet comes out you can do what is called “deep packet inspection”.

SM: For security applications. AA: Intelligent security – everyone is trying to make them smart secure ports. You want to compress packets, check viruses, worms and spam.

SM: I have seen a lot of companies trying to tackle that problem. AA: Every networking company wants to be intelligent. A few of our customers, 3Com and TopLayer, use our chips. TopLayer, for example, built a product suite – firewalls, denial of service attacks – where previously they would use a variety of other chips, now with just one of our chips they can get to 10 gigabits per second.

These are all areas where networks are becoming more intelligent. Rather than just switching packets they want to do a lot of security and services. Therefore, through their services, they act at line speeds without stopping the flow of traffic, and we are the only ones who can enable that. We can enable and scale the whole intelligent networking area.

Then there is the digital video space, where High Definition is taking off, and the new compression standards demands have gone up by a factor of 20 to 50. We are in with things like video teleconferencing, video surveillance, broadcast video, IP TV, all of those areas are huge. For customers such as GoBackTV, these are good products.

SM: Yes, I think your market segmentation is accurate. Intelligent Networking and High Definition Video are both high growth segments that have plenty of architectural discontinuity.

[To Be Continued]

[Part 12]
[Part 11]
[Part 10]
[Part 9]
[Part 8]
[Part 7]
[Part 6]
[Part 5]
[Part 4]
[Part 3]
[Part 2]
[Part 1]

This segment is part 13 in the series : The Next Big Innovation in Microprocessors: Anant Agarwal
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