ASIC or General-Purpose CPU?

About this interactive

A central processing unit is general: it can run almost any software, and it does many things fairly well without being specialized in any of them. An application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) is built to carry out one specific function. Because its circuit does nothing else, it does that job faster, and in volume more cheaply, than a CPU would. The lesson's Cisco switch has both. Its ASICs forward frames between ports, the data plane. Its CPU runs the management you log in to, the control plane. Some equipment has only ASICs, and some only a CPU. To sort a card, ask whether the job is one fixed function done over and over, or work that varies and changes with software. One trade-off to remember: designing an ASIC is costly, so it pays off only when the same chip is made in volume.

What you'll learn

Decide whether a job suits an ASIC (one fixed function, faster and cheaper at it, as in a switch's data plane) or a general-purpose CPU (varied or changing work, as in a switch's management)

Aligned to

CompTIA Security+

3.1 Compare and contrast security implications of different architecture models.

Key terms

Central Processing Unit: The primary processor chip in a computer that executes instructions from programs by performing arithmetic, logic, control, and input/output operations. CPU speed and core count directly affect system performance.
Integrated Circuit: A miniaturized electronic circuit containing transistors, resistors, and other components fabricated onto a single semiconductor chip, enabling the compact, high-speed logic that powers modern CPUs, memory modules, and nearly every digital device.
Data Plane: The part of a network device responsible for actually forwarding packets toward their destinations based on rules and tables built by the control plane. In a router, the data plane looks up each packet's destination in the forwarding table and sends it out the correct interface at high speed.
Control Plane: The part of a network device responsible for making routing and policy decisions, such as running routing protocols to build and maintain the routing table, which the data plane then uses to forward traffic. The control plane handles the intelligence of the network while the data plane handles the actual packet forwarding.

Topics

Interactive Streak Sort

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