NP-Click: A Programming Model for the Intel IXP1200

Publisher Summary A programming model inevitably balances a programmer's two competing needs: desire for ease of programming and the requirement for efficient implementation. This chapter describes NP-Click, a programming model for a common network processor, the Intel IXP 1200. The approach is illustrated by using NP-Click to implement an IPv4 packet forwarder. The IXP 1200 family is one of Intel's recent network processor product lines based on their Internet Exchange Architecture. Click is a domain-specific language designed for describing networking applications. It is based on a set of simple principles tailored for the networking community. NP-Click combines an efficient abstraction of the target architecture with features of a domain-specific language for networking. The model is designed to ease three major difficulties of programming network processors: taking advantage of hardware parallelism, arbitration of shared resources, and efficient data layout. The result is a natural abstraction that enables programmers to quickly write efficient code.

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