LSI Announces Axxia 4500 ARM Technology-based Communication Processors

By combining LSI networking accelerators and Virtual Pipeline technology with ARM’s power-efficient cores and scalable interconnect, the new Axxia processors are specifically designed to address the performance challenges facing next-generation networks.

“As more business and personal information moves to the cloud, the need to access data quickly and securely from any location, at any time, is critical and is forcing customers to look at new ways to manage this traffic,” said Jim Anderson, senior vice president and general manager, Networking Solutions Group, LSI. “The networks that carry the data are being tasked to do more than ever before, and the Axxia 4500 communication processor family is purpose-built to deliver the high performance required by these demanding trends.”

The Axxia 4500 processor family includes LSI field-proven acceleration engines that incorporate decades of communications solutions expertise. The new processors also include up to four ARM Cortex-A15 cores with a CoreLink CCN-504 coherent, QoS aware interconnect in 28nm process technology. The addition of LSI Virtual Pipeline technology allows equipment developers the ability to essentially reconfigure the processors for optimal performance on a packet-by-packet basis. The Axxia 4500 processors also include up to 100Gb/s of L2 switching function to reduce board space and bill of material costs.

“A data-rich, always-on, always-connected lifestyle is here and is constantly growing in potential. There is a vast growth of data to come and we can only imagine the possibilities it will present to consumers and businesses,” said Ian Ferguson, vice president, Segment Marketing, ARM. “ARM and LSI are providing secure, low-power solutions that enable next-generation networks to handle this explosion of data. The combination of ARM’s interconnect, energy-efficient multicore processor technology and advanced physical IP implementation, with LSI network acceleration framework, can enable customers to discover dramatic gains in performance within the parameters of practical power budgets.”

A key challenge facing many datacenter network managers is the fast emergence of SDN. SDN will require high levels of secure communication between SDN controllers and network elements such as switches and routers. Axxia packet processing and security accelerators are ideally suited to process secure communications for SDN protocols like OpenFlow. The flexibility of Axxia programmable accelerators allows Axxia technology-based solutions to provide a performance advantage in traditional networks, full SDN systems and hybrid environments, valuable as networks transition to SDN technology.

LSI will begin sampling the Axxia 4500 in Q4. LSI is showcasing its portfolio of networking acceleration solutions at the Open Networking Summit 2013 in Santa Clara from April 15-17.