Netronome, a leading designer of flow processors (NFP), on Wednesday said that it had inked a strategic relationship with Intel Corp. under which the latter will produce a series of forthcoming Netronome chips at its factories using 22nm process technology. The agreement will let Nitronome to produce its chips using the most advanced process technology in the world, which will help to boost performance and lower power consumption.

“Intel’s tri-gate transistor technology and 22nm manufacturing process provides significant benefits over legacy planar designs. As a result, our next generation flow processors will be several generations ahead of other communications processors, allowing Netronome to deliver up to 10 ‐times the performance with more than triple the energy efficiency,” said Jim Finnegan, senior vice president of engineering at Netronome.

Netronome offers a family of highly-programmable network flow processors and acceleration cards designed for integration with standard Intel architecture (IA)-based appliances. Netronome’s NFP family of network flow processors delivers line-rate throughput, tightly integrated packet and content processing and robust security features in a single chip. Netronome's products provide line-rate network throughput at 40Gb/s and beyond, while simultaneously offering the industry’s most-flexible level of flow analysis, content processing, application awareness and deep packet inspection. This combination of performance and programmability makes Netronome's NGPs well suited to meet the most-stringent design requirements of developers of next-generation network infrastructure products.

"Intel is delighted to provide Netronome with access to its leading edge tri-gate 22nm technology and integrated supply chain. While working with  Netronome during he  roduct  design cycle to optimize its flow processors and our foundry offerings, it was clear that Intel’s 22nm silicon technology and design infrastructure are a significant value‐fit with Netronome’s products," said Sunit Rikhi, vice president of the  technology and  manufacturing group at Intel.

Netronome’s current generation of flow processors began with a technology license agreement with Intel in November 2007, reaching volume‐shipments in 2011. Netronome’s next- ‐generation of processors based on Intel’s 22nm process and tri-gate transistors will sample in 2013.

Tags: Intel, 22nm, Netronome, NFP, Semiconductor