EE Times reports on efforts by “$18.9 billion communications giant” Cisco to hammer out a 3-year roadmaps for microprocessors, memories, ASICs, and other technology purchases. The roadmap would narrow the field of vendors and component sources, by requiring engineers wanting to use components not on the list to go through special review procedures, and there is talk of moving from Linux/Apache on… x86 to Linux/Apache on MIPS for “control plane” processors, according to the article. Rick Merritt writes . . .

“Cisco currently uses MIPS and PowerPC processors for so-called control plane operations; X86 processors to run Apache and Linux apps; and a variety of network processors from American Micro Circuits, Broadcom, Intel and others for data plane operations.”

“Rajeev Bang, a supply-chain manager responsible for microprocessors at Cisco, said the current effort could result in the company standardizing around one control plane CPU and a smaller number of network processors. The company is also considering using MIPS instead of X86 processors for Apache and Linux apps . . .”

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