Alcatel-Lucent has just released the world’s fastest network processor the FPE at 400 Gbps which uses half the power and ups transmission speed by a factor of four meaning service providers now have the ability to provide faster connections to customers at lower energy costs. Moreover, density levels have increased substantially as a result of this news meaning as long as heat dissipation is not an issue, you should be able to jam more bit processing technology per cubic centimeter of data center.

The processor will be available in 2012 as part of ALU’s IP routing portfolio and to give some perspective, a single FP3 processor could handle 70,000 simultaneous high definition video streams or 8.4 million simultaneous retail cloud sessions.

Moreover with such a boost in processing power, carriers will be in a better position to manage their network traffic allowing more reliable traffic optimization – which will in many cases be something carriers will charge for.

In addition, carriers will now have the ability to more easily experiment with new services as they will potentially have spare horsepower in their network equipment. I say potentially because with the growth of traffic on fixed and mobile networks, not to mention the advent of 4G/LTE roll-outs, service providers will have their hands full just keeping up with all the additional traffic on their networks.

So in the war between users who demand ever-more bandwidth and carrier equipment companies who are trying to supply the tech to allow carriers to serve data at adequate speeds, score one for the equipment company. Way to go Alcatel-Lucent… And while we’re on the topic – any chance I can get one of these in my next tablet? It seems you can never have enough speed – even if the processor you rely on is in your hands.

TMC’s Peter Bernstein has the details.