1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to pipelined information processing and, more particularly, to a system and method for a flexible number of lookups in pipeline-based packet processors.
2. Introduction
Increasing demands are being placed upon the data communications infrastructure. These increasing demands are driven by various factors, including the increasing bandwidth requirements of Internet multimedia applications (e.g., distribution of news, financial data, software, video, audio and multi-person conferencing, etc). To accommodate the increasing bandwidth requirements, communication link speeds have also continued to evolve. For example, 10 Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) ports are commonly used for I/O on many of today's network switches.