Intel Corporation today disclosed several significant features for the company's new communications platform, codenamed "Crystal Forest." Building upon Intel's communications infrastructure, the platform will handle data processing across the network more efficiently and securely, while addressing the specialized needs for handling cloud connectivity and content processing. With Crystal Forest, equipment manufacturers will be able to consolidate three communications workloads -- application, control and packet processing -- on multi-core Intel architecture processors to deliver better performance and accelerate time to market. They can also develop a scalable product line based on multiple Intel processor options to plan for future performance increases.