EZchip Semiconductor announced that it has "..signed a definitive agreement to acquire Tilera Corporation, a privately-held US-based company that develops high-performance multi-core processors, intelligent network interface cards and white-box appliances for data-center networking equipment .. under the terms of the agreement, EZchip will pay Tilera’s stockholders up to $130 million in cash;

According to recent announcements it seems the even DPI products, with their intense packet processing, are going towards NFV and virtualization in general purpose servers.

Vendors do state that it will take time (see "Allot Launched the New Service Gateway" - here and "Sandvine CEO Bullish on IBM Relations; SDN and NFV will Take Time" - here) - but is this the end of Network (or Packet)