The NPM is a dual Peripheral Component Interconnect Mezzanine Card (PMC) developed by GE for the C-130 AMP Avionics Modernization Program. The NPM utilizes the PMC slots on the General Processing Module (GPM) and provides two additional Ethernet ports as well as MIL-STD-1553B services for up to four separate buses. The Network Processor Mezzanine also contains a PowerQUICC II processor and memory allowing it to offload the MIL-STD-1553B and some Ethernet tasks from the GPM baseboard. Software applications are able to access the data from the Ethernet and 1553 directly from the NPM's memory. Offloading these functions from the GPM greatly improves overall system throughput.