An architecture for controlling a multiprocessing system to provide at least one network service to subscriber data packets transmitted in the system using a plurality of compute elements, comprising a management compute element including service set-up information for at least one service and at least one processing compute element applying said at least one network service to said data packets and communicating service set-up information with the management compute element in order to perform service specific operations on data packets. In a further embodiment, a method of controlling a processing system including a plurality of processors is disclosed. The method comprises the steps of operating at least one of said processors as a control authority providing service provisioning information for a subscriber; and operating a set of processors as a service specific compute element responsive to the control authority, receiving provisioning information from the subscriber and performing service specific instructions on data packets to provide IP content services.