PALO ALTO, Calif. -- A new consortium has set its sights on accelerating the development of next-generation networking and telecommunications products equipment by establishing common specifications that will allow network processors equipment providers to significantly reduce the design burden. The newly formed Network Processing NP Forum gives the network processing or industry and communications product vendors a cohesive voice. To accomplish this, the forum has established equipment maker round-table working groups in hardware, software, benchmarking and education to resolve common technical issues in the implementation of networks processors.

Network processors are rapidly gaining favor among equipment designers as faster, more flexible alternative to ASICs and general-purpose processors as the core component in networking equipment. The industry specifications that will emerge from the Network Processor Forum will provide manufacturers a common building block approach to matching integrating "Best of Breed" network processors and co-processors, switch fabrics, and software with a to meet the wide array of the latest networking and telecommunication services and features requirements.

More information, including the membership of the Network Processing Forum, is available at http://www.npforum.org