Packet Processing Language for Network Processors from IP Fabrics

IP Fabrics is a relatively new company that claim to offer a radical new approach to designing s/w for network processors. The following is taken from their website

"The radically different approach, which is targeted to Intel’s IXP2xxx NPU family, consists of a very-high-level packet processing language (called PPL, or Packet Processing Language) and a virtual machine environment for it on Intel NPUs. The language and environment are well suited for any application based on IP technology, including firewalls, VPNs, security gateways, intrusion detection, content switching, application-layer firewalling, SPAM filtering, traffic monitoring, and many more. The product fits seamlessly with the NPF (Network Processing Forum) APIs and with Intel’s IXP Portability Framework and development tools. "

They also have a paper describing PPL, it can be found here.