Cavium has announced that MontaVista will provide commercial embedded Linux support for the family of multi-core MIPS64 network security processors it announced today. The powerful multi-core Octeon chips target integrated network devices capable of processing network streams at the application level. MontaVista also supports Cavium's single-core Nitrox security processor family.

MontaVista and Cavium earlier announced MontaVista Linux support for the Nitrox XL, an embedded security processor on a mini-PCI card. Cavium has also previously partnered with Linux supplier LynuxWorks and with chipmakers IDT and Marvell on network security device reference designs.

The Octeon family of chips announced by Cavium today is expected to reach market in Q1 2005. MontaVista will support the chip family upon launch with its Linux Professional Edition 3.1, which includes the Eclipse-based DevRocket development environment.

Cavium Marketing Director Amer Haider said, “Today design engineers building high-performance networking equipment cannot leverage the rich software tools and applications available on Linux because networking data-plane ASICs and processors do not support standard programming models. Cavium Networks MIPS64-based multi-core OCTEON Processors change [enable] high-performance Layer3-Layer7 network services using Linux and standards based software in a scalable processor family.”

 
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