  Time-critical cyber-physical applications demand the timely delivery of
information. In this work, we employ a high-speed packet processing testbed to
quantitatively analyze a packet forwarding application running on a shared
memory multi-processor architecture, where efficient synchronization of
concurrent access to a Forwarding Information Base is essential for low-latency
and timely delivery of information. While modern packet processing frameworks
are optimized for maximum packet throughput, their ability to support timely
delivery remains an open question. Here we focus on the age of information
performance issues induced by throughput-focused packet processing frameworks.
Our results underscore the importance of careful selection of offered load
parameters and concurrency constructs in such frameworks.
