Programmable core integrated with hardware pipeline of network interface device

A method comprising:

• receiving a network packet into a hardware pipeline of a network device;
• parsing and retrieving information from the network packet;
• determining, by the hardware pipeline, a packet-processing action to be performed based on the retrieved information;
• sending, by the hardware pipeline, an action request to a programmable core, the action request to trigger the programmable core to execute a hardware thread to perform a job, which is associated with the packet-processing action and that generates contextual data;
• and
• retrieving and integrating the contextual data into performing the packet-processing action.

A programmable core comprising:

• a first cache operatively coupled to a hardware pipeline of a network interface device, the first cache to store a programmable window that is memory mapped to a set of hardware structures stored in a second cache of the hardware pipeline, the set of hardware structures to store a slice context comprising data associated with processing a network packet that has been parsed by the hardware pipeline;
• and
• a scheduler coupled with the first cache and the hardware pipeline, the scheduler to:
• receive, from the hardware pipeline, an action request being populated with indicator data;
• trigger, upon detecting the indicator data, a hardware thread to perform a job, which generates contextual data associated with a packet-processing action of the hardware pipeline;
• and
• update, using the contextual data, the data of the slice context via the programmable window.