Patent ID: 7822877

Claim:
A network processor integrated circuit (IC) for processing network traffic, the network processor IC comprising: a search engine-independent bus interface within the network processor IC for connecting to a search engine that is external to the network processor IC and includes a search memory, wherein the search engine utilizes a search engine-specific communications protocol; a software programmable search engine communications module within the network processor IC configured to enable communications between the network processor IC and the search engine via the search engine-independent bus interface according to the search engine-specific communications protocol; a programming interface for receiving computer readable instructions for programming the software programmable search engine communications module; and a traffic classifier for generating search keys that are provided to the search engine via the software programmable search engine communications module; wherein the software programmable search engine communications module comprises programmable hardware circuits, which when programmed in response to the computer readable instructions: cause the network processor IC to communicate with the search engine according to the search engine-specific communications protocol, including using a search engine-specific instruction set; and assign pins of the search engine-independent bus interface to an instruction bus, a data bus, and a reply bus; wherein; the pins assigned to the instruction bus are used to communicate search instructions from the network processor IC to the search engine; the pins assigned to the data bus are used to communicate the search keys and search entries from the network processor IC to the search engine; and the pins assigned to the reply bus are used to communicate indexes or handles from the search engine to the network processor IC.