Cisco announced a scalable and programmable embedded network processor earlier this week, designed to capitalize on the growing trend of increasingly interconnected devices, referred to as the Internet of Things or the Internet of Everything, as Cisco calls it.

Called nPower X1, the integrated processor provides high performance and bandwidth, as well as programmable control using open APIs (application programming interfaces) and advanced compute capabilities. The company said the product was released to prepare for the trillions of advanced "networked events" predicted to come online over the next decade.

The processor can scale to multi-terabit performance levels while handling trillions of transactions, according to Cisco. It was purpose-built for software-defined networking (SDN) and enables on-the-fly reprogramming for better service agility and simplified network operation.

Other notable features include:

- 400 Gigabits-per-second (Gbps) throughput from a single chip, to enable multi-terabit network performance. All packet processing, traffic management and input/output functions are integrated on a single nPower X1 and operate at high performance and scale.

- High-performing programmable control designed to seamlessly handle hundreds of millions of unique transactions per second. The nPower's processing architecture is purpose-built for machine-driven events and ultra-high-definition video applications.

- 4bn transistors on a single chip.

- Enables solutions with eight times the throughput and one quarter the power per bit compared with Cisco's previous network processor.