MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA--(Marketwire - September 14, 2010) -  With an in-depth review of market trends and vendor offerings, The Linley Group announced today the availability of their most recent report, "A Guide to Processors for Network Security." The ninth edition of the firm's report includes a review of security processor market drivers, including silicon integration trends and security feature requirements. A detailed review of key vendors and product offerings, including Intel's Xeon processors, also provides a current view of the technology landscape for equipment designers, engineering managers, financial analysts, and researchers.

"Outside of traditional security equipment, networking applications including enterprise routers and service-provider infrastructure, have adopted the use of embedded multicore security processors, which drove their sales to grow by 25 percent in 2009," said Bob Wheeler, senior analyst at The Linley Group. "Reflecting that growth and changes in the market, we restructured this edition of our report to focus on processors that integrate hardware acceleration for security functions, which serve a $1 billion market. As the cost of chip development continues to climb, the larger available processor market will be critical for security processor vendors to amortize their R&D investments."

Despite last year's tumultuous economy, sales of network security equipment and software remained strong as compared to other enterprise markets, according to the report. Integration has played a critical role in the market growth, as processors with integrated functions are replacing general purpose embedded processors aided by one or more accelerators. As a result, highly integrated system on a chip (SoC) processors are ideally suited to a range of security designs from SMB to the data center. The new report highlights these various embedded processors, including product comparisons of Cavium, Freescale, LSI, Netronome, NetLogic and Tilera offerings. The report also includes coverage of the newest embedded Xeon processors from Intel, which lack the hardware accelerators found in security processors but remain popular among network-security vendors. Finally, the report covers separate content-inspection accelerators offered by processor vendors as a part of their solution.

Availability

"A Guide to Processors for Network Security" is currently available directly from The Linley Group. For further details, including pricing and a list of included tables, visit the web site.
http://www.linleygroup.com/Reports/security.html

About The Linley Group

The Linley Group is the industry's leading source for independent technology analysis of semiconductors for networking, communications, mobile, and wireless applications. The company provides strategic consulting services, in-depth analytical reports, and Linley Tech events focused on advanced technology topics. The Linley Group is also the publisher of Microprocessor Report, the leading technical publication for unbiased analysis of high-performance processor technology. For insights on recent industry news, subscribe to the company's free email newsletters: "Linley Wire," "Linley on Mobile," and "Processor Watch" and follow us on Twitter @linleygroup.

Note to editors: To speak to an analyst from The Linley Group about this report, please contact: Erika Powelson, Orr & Company, 831.424.1811 or email erika@orr-co.com.

Contact Information:

For additional information, please contact:
Candace Doyle
The Linley Group
408-370-7631
candaced@linleygroup.com

Erika Powelson
Orr & Company
831-424-1811
erika@orr-co.com