An intelligent network processor is disclosed that provides a PCI express (PCIe) host bus adapter with firmware selectable hardware capabilities and firmware enabled emulation of capabilities not supported by hardware. Support for Fibre Channel (FC) and Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) protocols are provided through the same fabric ports, including multiple port trunking for both protocols. On chip protocol conversion is provided for switching and routing between FC and GbE ports. Switching using the same crossbar module is provided for both FC and GbE protocols. The crossbar module is coupled to directly access external DDR memory so that messages from FC, GbE, and PCIe interfaces may be switched directly to the DDR memory.