One aspect provides a network switch. The network switch includes hardware-based packet-processing logic for processing received packets, a processing unit, and an offload engine coupled to the processing unit. The offload engine is to offload, from the processing unit, packet-processing operations associated with a subset of the received packets. The offload engine comprises a processor core, at least one hardware packet-processing accelerator for performing the packet-processing operations, and a function-helper logic for interfacing between the processor core and the hardware packet-processing accelerator.