Join the revolution!

In as little as twenty years, we have witnessed an increase in social mobility on a par with that of the Industrial Revolution. Instead of being powered by canals, railways and steam engines, this revolution’s enabling technology is an infrastructure of communication nodes and the real revolution has mostly been hidden from view. When they first emerged, network and communications processors offered a solution to the bottleneck building around the data and control planes in the communications backbone. Once, these problems were dealt with through asics and, in some instances, still are. But, as with the Industrial Revolution, rapid growth required easier access to the enabling technology. It can be argued that, when it came, this was in the shape of network and communications processors. These application specific devices outperformed existing solutions in the areas that mattered; they were more flexible than asics and offered higher performance than general purpose processors. Since their inception, this special class of processor has seen phases of consolidation and expansion. Startups were purchased for huge figures by large IDMs, followed by smaller but more established and often fabless manufacturers making their mark through differentiated solutions. This rollercoaster ride was largely due to overzealous enthusiasm from Blue Chips, followed by a realisation that they couldn’t do it all alone.