SINGLE CHASSIS NETWORK ENDPOINT SYSTEM WITH NETWORK PROCESSOR FOR LOAD BALANCING

摘要

A network processing endpoint system for responding to network requests via a network is provided. A network processor is programmed to receive network requests and to provide load balancing of the network requests or workloads. The network processor distributes network requests to a set of processing units, which are programmed to respond to the requests. An interconnection medium, which may be a system bus, a switch fabric, or shared memory, directly connects the network processor to the processing units, such that the paths and latencies of the connections are deterministic. Hardware load balancing of the processing units may also be accomplished through the assignment or re-assignment of the processing units to specific tasks to be performed.