Multicore and multithreading peculiarities in network processors

General-purpose high-performance processors exploit combinations of diverse approaches to the computation parallelism, multicoring and multithreading included. Due to objective difficulties for quantitative estimations of multicoring and multithreading efficiency, as well as their interdependency in modern server processors, various developing companies choose differing structural solutions based on some proprietary evaluations or followed company traditions. Meanwhile, regarding network processors specifically, thorough consideration of their organization peculiarities and examination of their typical software features may induce the developers to a qualitative conclusion on preference of multicoring against multithreading, which would stimulate them to use in the network processor design the ARM architecture with its predilection for aggressive multicoring and conceptual disregard for multithreading.