  In the last decade we have witnessed a rapid growth in data center systems,
requiring new and highly complex networking devices. The need to refresh
networking infrastructure whenever new protocols or functions are introduced,
and the increasing costs that this entails, are of a concern to all data center
providers. New generations of Systems on Chip (SoC), integrating
microprocessors and higher bandwidth interfaces, are an emerging solution to
this problem. These devices permit entirely new systems and architectures that
can obviate the replacement of existing networking devices while enabling
seamless functionality change. In this work, we explore open source, RISC
based, SoC architectures with high performance networking capabilities. The
prototype architectures are implemented on the NetFPGA-SUME platform. Beyond
details of the architecture, we also describe the hardware implementation and
the porting of operating systems to the platform. The platform can be exploited
for the development of practical networking appliances, and we provide use case
examples.
