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A general-purpose protocol processor is specified with a dedicated architecture for protocol processing. This paper defines a functional coverage, analyses the control requirements, specifies functional pages and a controller unit. The general-purpose protocol processor is aimed for network terminals, therefore routing is not completely supported. However it should be possible to use it as part of a router with some minor modifications. The general-purpose protocol processor is partitioned into two parts, a configurable stand alone part and a program based microcontroller. The configurable part performs the protocol processing without any running program. The processor does not execute any cycle based program, instead execution is controlled by configuration vectors and control vectors. The microcontroller assists with the interface to the host processor and handles the configuration. It is concluded that by partitioning the control into three levels, the architecture is flexible and verification is simplified. The proposed architecture also has higher performance and lower power dissipation than other solutions.

A novel configuration based general purpose protocol processor is proposed. It can perform much faster protocol processing compared to general purpose processors. As it is configuration based, different protocols can be configured for different applications. The configuration makes compatibility possible, it also makes very fast protocol processing on the fly. The proposed architecture can be used as a platform or an accelerator for network based applications.

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