Network processor adoption continues, says IDC
15 August 2001
News
The hype surrounding the network processor unit (NPU) market has subsided, but the growth potential still remains lucrative for the future. According to IDC, several semiconductor vendors have achieved significant design wins (commitments from OEMs to develop a system around an NPU) across a variety of LAN, WAN, access and other networking markets.
"Although the NPU promise of widespread displacement of ASICs within most networking markets is still far-off, the increasing number of design wins, especially in certain high-growth equipment segments, such as multiservice WAN switches, next-generation SONET, DSLAMs, and others, will continue to spark further demand into the future," said Sean Lavey, Program Manager for IDC's Communication Semiconductors program. "However, the reality of each vendor's potential sales growth will vary significantly due to the quality of its design win activities."
In a recent study, IDC has categorised the design wins in the market by OEM-type (tier-1, tier-2/3, and start-up) and by detailed market applications. It says that NPUs are clearly focused on replacing the datapath ASIC opportunities within WAN system applications, with this segment accounting for approximately 64% of all NPU design wins. Access market applications followed to account for 16% of all design wins, while LAN market applications, which were the initial users of NPUs, fell to account for only 12% of the design win activity.
www.idc.com
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