BOSTON -- As voice and data worlds continue their ascent toward convergence, the combination of speed and flexibility is becoming increasingly important in today's high-capacity networks for equipment manufacturers as well as service providers. A recent Yankee Group Report, "Network Processors: Fact or Fiction?," finds that in order to gain a competitive advantage, equipment manufacturers need a faster time-to-market and service providers must avoid forklift upgrades. Network processors are designed to give these vendors and service providers much-needed flexibility by changing the software code on programmable silicon. Product and service differentiation become less of a challenge in terms of time and resources for the vendors and service providers by quickly adopting new technologies. Application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs) are utilized for the overwhelming majority of switches and routers, whereas general-purpose central processing units (CPUs) are being utilized in some cases. Network processors are aimed to take some of that business away from ASICs. "Most importantly, network processors help reduce the gap between idea conception and time-to-market (read: ASIC implementation) as well as what the standard product (read: general-purpose CPU) can deliver and what the customer needs, and can do all of this with fewer resources and costs than using ASIC," according to Jay Patel, author of the Report. The Yankee Group believes that the network processors industry has made significant progress over the last two years and will carve out its niche in the overall communications semiconductor industry. The network processors market will witness a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 66% over the five-year period as the sales grow from $200 million in 2000 to $2.5 billion by 2005. The Yankee Group