Architectural considerations for CPU and network interface integration
Charles D. Cranor, Ragavendran Gopalakrishnan, Peter Z. Onufryk · IEEE Micro · 2000
The authors describe UNUM, an architecture for integrating communications functionality into the CPU. UNUM not only simplifies the design of communications processors but also improves their performance and provides them with greater flexibility. With these capabilities, functions typically performed in cuscom hardware can be moved to software executing on the main CPU.