„EZchip” was one of the very few world’s fabless developers of the network processors. A network processor is a processor capable of moving vast amounts of data between multiple network interfaces, probably multiplying it if several consumers are interested in the same content, using priority queues etc.. One usually finds network processors in cellular base stations and in huge routers of Internet providers.
„EZchip”’s network processors NP3 and NP4 were based on IBM’s „PowerPC 3” general-purpose CPU, which proved to be highly customizable and powerful.
After I left the company, „EZchip” was bought by „Mellanox” (in 2016), which, in turn, was bought by „Nvidia” (2020).
Work Experience
I was working in the „Driver” group, which wrote software that runs alongside the network processor and configures it.
- Started in 2010, finised in 2012.
- Position: Embedded Software Developer.
My accomplishments
I helped to developed two network processors, NP3 and NP4. They both had ten RX and ten TX network interfaces, which can transfer data at 10 Gbit/sec, and they could be configured together to form XLAUI (40 Gb/s), Interlaken or XAUI (10 Gb/s) interfaces. The configuration could be performed on-the-fly, — that was one of my projects, — by dumping the TX data, reconfiguration of only the necessary interfaces and allowing the data flow again, without losing link on other interfaces. All this took very small time, we’re speaking about tens of microseconds here.
I have implemented power-up sequence of NP4, including setup of the network interfaces, arrangement of internal weighted queues for data transfer, configuration of the two lowest levels of the OSI model and so on.
Besides, I’ve designed and implemented Soft Reset technology. Due to a bug in the fabrication process, the NP3 network processor’s core had to be rebooted once in a while. I’ve implemented this reboot without losing link on the RX and TX interfaces. The whole reboot took about 150 μsec. The users from both sides of the network processor didn’t even notice the reboot.