NPF Announces New Interface Spec

SAN JOSE, Calif. -- Simplifying and lowering the costs of integrating network processing technologies, the Network Processing Forum (NPF) today announced its latest interface specification: the Message Layer Implementation Agreement (IA). This IA defines the format and types of information exchanged between network processing elements (NPE) such as cryptographic engines, search engines or other co-processor or processor components within a networking device. This standardized communication enables system designers to construct networking equipment using NPE hardware and/or software from multiple vendors without requiring proprietary message formats.

"The Message Layer IA will make it easier for chip manufacturers and third party software developers to market and integrate the unique benefits that their particular products bring to the overall networking solution," said Chuck Sannipoli, board member of the Network Processing Forum. "A key goal of all of our hardware, software and benchmarking specifications is to foster interoperability between hardware components and facilitate easy integration with the necessary software components."

The Message Layer, as defined in the IA, sits at the boundary between the hardware interfaces over which it runs, and the software APIs that run over it. The specification outlines a set of defined message fields, how to compose those message fields into a valid message, how any NPE can specify which fields it needs and which it requires, and finally, a model for how any instantiation of the above can be communicated to an NPE. This enables networking software to be designed with little or no awareness of the details of the underlying hardware interfaces and promotes the reuse of networking software across different hardware interfaces. The IA combines a high degree of flexibility with the ability to be efficiently implemented in both hardware and software.

The IA covers NPE-to-NPE communications over a range of common NPE-to-NPE conveyances including the NPF Streaming Interface, NPF Look Aside Interface and switch fabrics. All conveyances must meet a minimal set of requirements as outlined in the IA. In-band messages are composed of a configured number of fixed-sized (1 byte) slots. These slots are grouped into one or more consecutive message fields, which, in a message header or message trailer, carry the NPE-to-NPE information along with the message payload. An out-of-band configuration mechanism is used to determine the meaning associated with the in-band messages for both the sending and receiving NPEs.

The Message Layer IA is available at no charge on the NPF Website at http://www.npforum.org/techinfo/approved.shtml.

"A key goal of the Message Layer IA is to enable multi-component and multi-vendor interoperability between NPEs beyond the physical interconnect level," said Michael Lerer, Chair of the NPF Hardware Working Group. "The IA provides everything needed for implementation including a message layer reference model, NPE requirements, System Architectural Entity operation and formal message format definitions."

Network Processing Forum (NPF)