A method for the stateful data-plane algorithm state synchronization in the network processing unit

This work presents a network processing unit based on specialized computational cores that is used for packet processing in network devices (e.g. in network switches). Nowadays stateful data-plane algorithms are developing in software-defined networks. The idea of stateful data-plane algorithms is to move a part of control information from control plane to data plane. But these algorithms require hardware support because they need resources for state handling. This work presents the network processing unit architecture modifications that allow to use stateful data-plane algorithms that require state synchronization between the NPU processing pipelines.