what does "SWITCH" in hardware architecture mean?

[emr_1]

One of my customers is using PA-3020 and thinking about replace.

When I comparing following diagrams, I have one question.

PA-3020 has dedicated "signature matching", "security processing", and "network processing" as below

Compare to above, PA-400 has ONE dedicated processor with 3 features included.

PA-3200 has THREE dedicated processors which are same as PA-3020.

Here is question.

I can see Security Processor but can't find "signature matching" nor "network processing".

Instead, I can see "switch". What this switch really does? Is this same as "network processing"??

Regards,

Emr

[reaper · Accepted solution]

the PA-3400 has a switch fabric instead of the fpga based network processor in the PA-3200, hence the relabelling

there's no FPGA's in the PA-3400 so no signature lookups on dedicated hardware

the PA-3200 slide is slightly misleading as the 3220 also doesn't have signature lookups on dedicated hardware

[Raido_Rattameister]

What is best resource for this info or is it internal only?

[emr_1]

@reaper 
Thank you, I understood that.

@Raido_Rattameister 

The articles I know is only this one (except legacy platforms):

https://www.paloaltonetworks.com/resources/pa-series-next-generation-firewalls-hardware-architecture...

For more details, I believe that would be internal.