Patent ID: 8059650

Claim:
A method comprising: receiving a packet over a network; selecting a first processing core from a plurality of processing cores to assign the packet, the selecting of the first processing core based on specialized processing unit availability in the first processing core and each of the plurality of processing cores; parsing the packet to identify a first packet header and a second packet header; assigning by the first processing core the first packet header and the second packet header to separate specialized processing units within the first processing core; processing the first packet header and the second packet header in the separate specialized processing units to produce results; determining a source media access control (MAC) address in a first specialized processing unit of the first processing core; determining a destination MAC address in a second specialized processing unit of the first processing core; determining a session for the packet in a third specialized processing unit of the first processing core; determining a route for the packet in a fourth specialized processing unit of the first processing core; determining an egress bridge address for the packet in a fifth specialized processing unit of the first processing core; gathering the results of the separate specialized processing units for the packet at a forwarding block; and deciding by the forwarding block an action to be performed on the packet based on gathered results.