METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR ISSUING COMMANDS TO A NETWORK PROCESSOR CONFIGURED TO PROVIDE A PLURALITY OF APIS

The present invention provides techniques for controlling the functionality of a network processor and for facilitating integration of the network processor with a host system. Application programming interfaces (APIs) are provided which can be invoked by the host system for performing device level functions on the network processor. The APIs are provided by a device control module which may execute either on the host system or on the network processor. A host application may invoke an API and the function corresponding to the invoked API is performed by the network processor. Responses or results from the function execution may then be forwarded by the network processor to the host application.