Bridge for enabling communication between a FIFO interface and a PL3 bus for a network processor and an I/O card

摘要

A bridge for converting a relatively high speed communication interfaces provided by a network processor into another type of relatively high speed interface that is supported by an I/O card in a network device. A proprietary high speed communication interface can be a first-in-first-out (FIFO) streaming data interface. The other type of high speed interface supported by an I/O card can be PL3, PL4, SPI 3, SPI 4, and the like. The network devices can include, routers, switches, firewalls, gateways, and the like. The bridge can be configured as an application specific integrated circuit (ASIC).