AdvancedTCA Newsletter

What’s New in AdvancedTCA

• The AdvancedTCA Summit program is now mostly finalized, and is scheduled from October 21-23, 2008 at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, California. This event will cover the latest topics in AdvancedTCA and MicroTCA through tutorials, forums, workshops, expert table sessions, keynotes, and panel sessions. Leading experts from Intel, Nortel, Cisco, Radisys, Emerson Network Power, Wind River, AMCC, Kontron, PICMG, and many others will be presenting. For more information about the Summit, visit www.advancedtcasummit.com.
  

Plus - 1. Market Watch 2. Industry News 3. Navigating the Technology Minefield 4. Organization Updates 5. Contributing Editors Perspectives 6. Features 7. UNH-IOL News 8. Financial News 9. Classifieds 10. Newsletter Advertising Rates 11. Newsletter Archives

AdvancedTCA Acronyms

1. Market Watch AdvancedTCA Finally Beats a Market Forecast, By Eric Heikkila, Contributing Editor, and Director of Embedded Hardware Practice, Venture Development Corporation (VDC) AdvancedTCA recently achieved a major milestone — it beat a market forecast. Done as part of VDC’s 2008 Merchant Embedded Computer Board research on the Single Board Computer market, our AdvancedTCA CPU Blade market estimate for 2007 of US $305.3 million greatly exceeded our forecast (US$130.2 million), which we published in 2006 based on 2005 data. AdvancedTCA has finally achieved critical mass — and at least a year ahead of schedule. Market participants should be ecstatic (and boastful) over sales that are more than double projections. Our current forecast for CPU blades predicts modest growth for 2008 and 2009 compared to recent rates amid fears that credit and financial market problems will affect the communications industry (AdvancedTCA’s primary market) over the short term. VDC expects delays in some previously planned “greenfield” deployments. AdvancedTCA growth will continue with dollar volume shipments of CPU blades forecast to grow 26.9 percent from 2007 to 2008, but the pace will slow. Growth is projected to be 22.5 percent and 17.5 percent from 2008 to 2009 and 2009 to 2010, respectively. Higher growth should then return with a 25.7 percent projection for 2010 to 2011. Obviously, as markets get larger, rapid growth rates become more difficult to achieve. In addition, this forecast only paints part of the picture as it represents only board-level sales, not integrated systems (not yet investigated by VDC this year). Exceeding a collaboratively developed market forecast is a very important and positive development for the AdvancedTCA market. This market is finally gaining critical mass as the major suppliers have built scale. The figures prove that AdvancedTCA has become more entrenched in I/O intensive applications deep in the telecom/datacom network core. The year-over-year growth rates projected in our latest CPU blade forecast are not the exorbitant ones of past years. Instead, they are realistic but still impressive double-digit values for a market segment built on improving time-to-market and fulfilling cost containment requirements for NEPs. This forecast very much maintains our tradition of conservative market projections, so perhaps it will start a new trend in which AdvancedTCA markets consistently exceed forecasts. Eric Heikkila can be reached at eric@atcanewsletter.com.

Annual Sponsors Annual Sponsors

2. Industry News

Market Research

According to a major new report, ATCA, AMC, & MicroTCA Market Forecast: Revenue Surge Ahead, the second generation of ATCA, MicroTCA, and advanced mezzanine card (AMC) systems now coming to market are poised to fulfill first-gen ATCA's revenue promise, with revenues growing from $587 million this year to $7.2 billion in 2012.The report identifies and analyzes the full spectrum of vendors developing ATCA, AMC, and MicroTCA components and systems. It covers more than 360 different products from 50 different suppliers, offering more than 1,500 data points for detailed product comparisons on a wide range of criteria. The 80-page report offers an updated market forecast for ATCA products through 2012. For more information, visit www.heavyreading.com or contact dave.williams@heavyreading.com.

Company and Product News

Tundra Semiconductor introduced an evaluation platform centered on its Tsi630 multi-standard RapidIO Switch. In addition to the Tundra Tsi620, the multi-platform evaluation platform uses Texas Instruments TMS320TCI6487 high performance multi-core DSP and an Altera Stratix III FPGA to enable prototyping and, ultimately, cost reduction in applications such as high performance wireless and video processing, medical imaging and military signal-processing solutions. The platform allows customers to use the RapidIO protocol for DSP or processor aggregation, while leveraging the Tsi620's hardware bridging to low cost PCI-enabled processors. For more information, visit www.tundra.com.

Tundra also announced the Tundra Tsi572 Serial RapidIO Switch. This scalable, low power switch, adds another processor aggregation solution to Tundra's portfolio of RapidIO products. According to Tundra, the new Tsi572 Switch is the lowest power RapidIO Switch available on the market today, compliant with the RapidIO 1.3 specification. For more information, visit www.tundra.com.

Ericsson has announced that it has developed the BMR453 series of DC/DC converters that uses a digital control platform contained within the modules themselves. By integrating more into the control circuitry, the concept frees up real estate for greatly improving the power density. According to Ericsson, the most important application areas for the BMR453 series are systems that must use a telecom input voltage with battery backup or both -48V and -60V nominal input voltages. The converters meet the insulation requirements of EN60950 and come complete with vital industry standard features. An evaluation kit is available to help designers evaluate and program the modules. It comprises evaluation board, operating manual, CD containing Graphic User Interface (GUI) and cables. For more information, visit www.ericsson.com or www.ericsson.mobi.

Elma Bustronic has upgraded its 5-slot AdvancedTCA Backplane with a new shelf manager interconnect scheme. The upgraded 5-slot ATCA backplane now features standard MicroTCA connectors, which are small and dense, for the Elma’s IPM Sentry shelf manager connections. In addition to saving space, the connectors are widely available, reliable, and with compression mount design are field-replaceable. The 5-slot ATCA backplane features a 3x replicated Mesh topology, although a standard Full Mesh or even Dual Star can be implemented. The backplane has 18 layers and is optimized for performance via signal integrity studies. For more information, visit www.bustronic.com.

Enea announced major system-level debug and profiling enhancements for its Eclipse-based Enea Optima Tool Suite. New for version 1.5 is Optima's Event Viewer and System Profiler tools. Optima is an Eclipse-based Integrated Development Environment for the Enea OSE real-time operating system. The Optima Event Viewer provides access to OSE's event action mechanisms. The Optima System Profiler provides access to OSE's profiling mechanisms. For more information, visit www.enea.com.

Emerson Network Power added a new multi-core processor blade to its AdvancedTCA blade portfolio, the ATCA-7350. The ATCA-7350 combines quad-core Intel Xeon processors with a wide range of memory options, plus redundant 10GbE support. The new ATCA-7350 processor blade supports a wide range of applications, including media servers in IPTV and IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) broadband networks. The blade is based on two 2.13GHz quad-core Intel Xeon processors and features a main memory capacity of up to 32GB. Dual hot-swappable and RAID-capable on-board disk drives can provide either enterprise-class disk performance and storage capacity in network datacenter applications, or dual automotive or solid-state disks in central office applications requiring Network Equipment Building Standard (NEBS) capability. To meet the varying needs of the communications industry, the ATCA-7350 can be configured with a variety of software offerings, ranging from firmware-only to fully integrated and verified software operating environments. For more information, visit www.EmersonNetworkPower.com/EmbeddedComputing.

Emerson also announced the availability of SpiderWareM³ platform management software designed for remote management, monitoring and maintenance of multiple IPMI-compatible platforms. Available on the Centellis 500 and Centellis 1000 MicroTCA systems, and planned for the Centellis 2000 AdvancedTCA system, the new intelligent platform management tool enables assessment and assimilation of Emerson Network Power’s systems into existing middleware applications. For more information, visit www.EmersonNetworkPower.com/EmbeddedComputing.

CommAgility announced that Aeroflex has selected CommAgility's AMC-D4F1 module as a key component in its new TM500 LTE Test Mobile platform. The TM500 LTE Test Mobile is designed to address the current and future challenges of 3GPP LTE (3G Long Term Evolution) infrastructure development, test and rollout. According to CommAgility, LTE is a significant advance in mobile network technology from 3G. Each AMC-D4F1 module includes four 1.2GHz Texas Instruments (TI) TMS320C6455 digital signal processors (DSPs) and a Xilinx Virtex-4 FX series FPGA. A 10Gbps SRIO infrastructure provides deterministic bandwidth for data transfers on and off card, and separate Gigabit Ethernet is provided for control, management and delivery of baseband or other processed data streams. For more information, visit www.commagility.com.

Elma Electronic has announced the Blu!Box MicroTCA enclosure, a 19 inch rackmount system in a 5U height. It is compliant to the MicroTCA.0 core specification. The chassis features 2 MCH, 2 Power Modules, and 2 high performance EMMC cooling units. All of the modules/components are hot swappable and controlled via IPMI (Intelligent Platform Management Interface). The cooling units feature 5 each high performance fans and have PWM (Pulse Width Modulation) control. The chassis holds up to 10 full size AMCs in the single module format. For more information, visit www.elma.com.

Elma has also announced AMC boards that act as an air baffle and filler panel for empty slots in MicroTCA chassis. The AMC air baffle can be plugged into unused slots in a MicroTCA chassis to redirect or contain airflow. The cards also act as a filler board, preventing open slots and helping to protect the chassis from outside elements such as dust. The Elma AMC Air Baffle/Filler Boards come in both full and mid sizes and in single module format. Other sizes, including double module or compact size are available upon request. For more information, visit www.elma.com.

Integrated Device Technology (IDT) announced a new member of the IDT family of central packet switches (CPS). According to IDT, the new device provides IDT customers with the opportunity for more bandwidth, productivity and performance than existing CPS family members by offering up to ten 4x ports of 10G connectivity. The new device supports sRIO packet switching (including unicast, multicast and optional broadcast) from any of its 10 input ports to any of its 10 output ports and is pin-to-pin compatible with the existing IDT PPS family of devices. The new CPS device is currently sampling and is priced at $55 in 10,000 unit quantities. For additional product information on the IDT central packet switching solutions, visit http://www.IDT.com/go/CPS.

Kontron debuted its family of AdvancedMC packet processing modules optimized for layer 4 to layer 7 data and security processing, targeting network equipment providers who design 3G/4G BTS, RNC, xGSN and Media Gateways. The Kontron AM42xx series of AdvancedMC Intelligent IO modules are designed with the Cavium Networks OCTEON Plus CN56xx packet processors with 12 64bit MIPS cores with up to 14.4 Billion MIPS64 instructions per second (14.4 GOPS). According to Kontron, they are the first to be designed with high-density, high-bandwidth serial IO technology compared with legacy parallel IO technology. For more information, visit www.kontron.com

LeCroy announced the launch of the WavePro 7, the first product series in the new Zi Family of oscilloscopes. The launch represents the first deployment of LeCroy's next-generation chipset and latest streaming architecture, X-Stream II. According to LeCroy, the WavePro 7 oscilloscope is the only complete debug solution with up to 6 GHz of bandwidth available. Chief Executive Officer Tom Reslewic states “Our next-generation chipset enables high fidelity signal capture, and our new X-Stream II proprietary architecture delivers 10 to 20 times faster response rates, with long memory handling in a new industrial design.” For more information, visit www.lecroy.com.

Astek displayed at the NXTcomm 2008 Conference samples of the A77404-AMC 4Gbps Fibre Channel Host Bus Adapter in the Advanced Mezzanine Card (AMC) form factor. The card is supported under all major operating systems, including Microsoft Windows XP and Windows Server 2003, Linux 2.6, LynxOS and VxWorks 5.5/6.x. Built with LSI Fusion-MPT technology, the HBA provides end users implementing FibreChannel infrastructures with up to 4 independent channels each supporting Arbitrated-Loop for up to 127 target devices, for more than 500 enclosures or target disks. For more information, visit www.astekcorp.com.

AFORE Solutions announced its InterPort Ethernet Protection software, which allows equipment providers to improve the robustness and reliability of their Ethernet product offerings. Operating over predefined primary and alternate transport paths, InterPort automatically switches to alternate paths on link or node failures enabling suppliers of Ethernet platforms to provide the resilient connectivity for mission critical applications. For more information, visit www.aforesolutions.com.

3. Navigating the Technology Minefield, from Lance Leventhal, Technology Editor

NOT YOUR FATHER'S OUTSOURCER ANY MORE

Outsourcing has changed tremendously in the past few years. Now almost every high technology company has an offshore center doing a wide variety of work, ranging from simple maintenance to complete development projects. Companies are becoming truly international in scope with facilities and customers spanning the globe.

So where does that leave the original outsourcers, particularly those with Indian bases? Clearly, they want to move beyond the highly competitive parts of the market that are primarily cost-driven. Instead, they want to be complete suppliers, offering whatever level of services customers want all around the globe. And they want to be technology leaders with their own intellectual property rather than just simple service providers.

Ron Burns, General Manager, Semiconductor and System Solutions at Wipro, spoke with me recently about his company’s evolution. Wipro is now a multibillion dollar company listed on the New York Stock Exchange (and part of the NYSE’s Technology-Media-Telecom index). Its compound annual growth rate has been 36 percent over the past five years. It has a presence in 53 countries with over 88,000 employees and 24 development centers. For example, its product engineering group has over 17,500 employees engaged in R&D services, over 2,000 hardware design engineers, over 200 active clients, and over 7,500 man-years of experience. It can handle every aspect of design from product conceptualization through development, system integration and verification, and transition to manufacturing. It participates in leading technology forums, standards organizations, and partner programs, and has amassed over 75 patents and invention disclosures in the past two years. It is already the world’s #1 IP provider in spaces such as IEEE 1394, WLAN, and Bluetooth with more to come. Its clients include 10 of the top 15 communication service providers, 7 of the top 10 mobile terminal vendors, and 8 of the top 10 fabless semiconductor firms.

What are the advantages to customers? Major ones include:

• Worldwide centers, so design and development can be performed almost anywhere.
• Ready access to emerging centers and ability to handle projects requiring local content.
• Single point of responsibility rather than having to deal with many suppliers for different aspects of a project.
• Ability to take on all aspects of a project, depending on current or changing needs.
• Extensive experience and access to suppliers around the globe.

If you haven’t evaluated your outsourcing policy in a while, you should do so. The outsourcers have grown up, and will play a leading role in tomorrow’s technology markets, particularly as new opportunities occur in emerging economies throughout the world.

WHO IS TRACKING YOUR EDA TOOL LICENSES

"Give us the tools, and we will finish the job." — Winston Churchill
"She’s got a license to thrill." — Popular song lyrics

EDA tools are vital to most development projects today. Tools from the likes of Cadence Design Systems, Mentor Graphics, and Synopsys are essential for developing ASICs and FPGAs, laying out circuit boards, and verifying system behavior. And the tools are not cheap, often costing $100,000 or more per seat. Licensing arrangements are typically complex, involving time-based subscriptions, application tokens covering usage, and maintenance agreements.

Most companies end up with many licenses, since new tools are constantly appearing, project needs and personnel change, and technologies advance all the time. So who tracks the licenses? In most cases, license management is a low-priority job and gets done on a hit-and-miss basis. Licenses may expire unexpectedly (even in a critical stage of a project), accounting is very difficult, and companies may end up paying for licenses no one is currently using (the project has ended or the tool user has departed). Moreover, companies and managers want to know how much licenses are uses, who and what project is using them, and perhaps even who is not using them (do they need training?). How can you decide what licenses you need without usage data?

There is a solution — and, as usual, it resides on the computers one already has. TeamEDA offers License Asset Manager, a tool for combining software license asset information. It keeps an inventory of your licenses and tracks vendor contacts, purchase order history, subscription and support renewals, and license agreements. It provides alert warnings well before expirations and offers utilization metrics and reports for accounting, audit, and compliance purposes. To find out more, consult TeamEDA’s website at www.teameda.com. License Asset Manager handles all the major EDA tools and, major mechanical design tools as well (such as ones from Dassault, PTC, and Fluent).

A handy-dandy piece of software indeed! Of course, one wonders what happens if one amasses too many license managers. Does one then need a manager to manage the managers? A software bureaucracy in the making!

PROBING THE UNIVERSE

“The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves” — Shakespeare, Julius Caesar

Why can’t you pick up that signal? The instrument (oscilloscope or logic analyzer) for which you paid a king’s ransom of money is rated well into the GHz range. But somehow all you get is a large amount of noise. And no matter what you do, the situation only seems to get worse.

Before you start screaming at the oscilloscope (which doesn’t speak English anyway), consider whether the probe might be at fault. Probes that can handle lower frequencies often introduce too much noise at GHz levels. So jiggling the connection won’t help at all, nor will a more intense reading of the specification or instruction booklet. Furthermore, if you must examine many lines (as in a parallel bus or complex serial interface), you have to connect and disconnect the scope many times.

There are better solutions. I recently discussed some of them with Brock LaMeres of Probing Technology, who specializes in developing “probes that meet the needs of today’s high-speed digital design engineers.” If that sounds like you, you might want to look at their Website at www.probingtechnology.com. They do custom work, and also have standard products for common situations such as PCI Express, where their midbus probe adapters allow you to examine the entire link in a hands-free configuration. The solution could be closer than you ever thought.

NEW MEMBER OF THE BOARD BUSINESS

There is a dynamic new startup in the San Diego area, formed by an experienced management and engineering team with a proven track record in the embedded board business. The startup, JumpGen Systems, has several products in development including ATCA, PrAMC, PrPMC, and CPCI solutions. JumpGen is committed to accelerating development and time to market for next generation designs, and offers a flexible business model ranging from standard OEM/ODM to private labeling or licensed production following product design and validation. JumpGen is eager to develop products to customer requirements and is open to standards based or custom form factors. Visit JumpGen Systems at www.jumpgen.com.

CONTINUING EDUCATION

Need an update on high-frequency board design? Do you think in MHz but your board works in GHz? You may need a course from signal integrity expert (and widely published author) Eric Bogatin. His current schedule is provided here as a service (for more details, see www.bethesignal.com). Highly recommended (customers include Agilent Technologies and Intel).

August 12-13, Santa Clara, CA: Signal Integrity Characterization Techniques
Covers TDR, VNA and S-Parameters

September 29-30, San Jose, CA: Essential Principles of Signal Integrity
Building engineering intuition to solve signal integrity problems by finding the root cause

October 1-2, San Jose, CA: High-Speed Design Principles
Designing systems with clock frequencies from over 500 MHz to above 10 GHz

4. Organization Updates

Articles

CP-TA Update, By Sven Freudenfeld, CP-TA/Kontron

The Communications Platforms Trade Association (CP-TA) has had a busy spring and early summer 2008. After announcing two new test tools at the MicroTCA Summit in May, CP-TA announced an important milestone at NxtComm in June: the approval of interoperability validation levels for products tested with CP-TA authorized tools. See the full article.

SCOPE Alliance Update: Virtualization Package and Environmental Profile,
By Timo Jokiaho, SCOPE Alliance Technical Officer, and Ron Breault, SCOPE Alliance Technical Co-Chair

SCOPE Alliance, an association of Network Equipment Providers (NEPs), recently announced two technical documents that clarify standards for the commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) ecosystem: a Virtualization Package and an Environmental Profile. SCOPE is dedicated to helping, enabling, and promoting open carrier grade platforms based on COTS hardware/software and Free Open Source Software (FOSS) building blocks, and advancing interoperability. See the full article.

Service Availability Forum Specifications for Supporting Java, By Magnus Karlson, SA Forum

Announcements

The SCOPE Alliance announced that IBM has joined as a Contributor member. Astute Networks, Conference ConCepts and Freescale Semiconductor have also joined the alliance as Supporter members. For information on how to join SCOPE Alliance, visit http://www.scope-alliance.org/index.html.

The RapidIO Trade Association announced the addition of new members: GE Fanuc Intelligent Platforms, HDL Design House, Motorola, Nortel, Qualcomm, RMI Corporation, and Wintegra. The Association also unveiled its new technology roadmap that provides details about RapidIO Specification Revision 2.0, and previews the development of Specification Rev. 3.0, which will continue to be defined collaboratively over the next 24 months. While the current standard (Specification Rev. 1.3) will continue to dominate embedded applications for the foreseeable future, silicon using the latest revision is expected to debut in 2009. Details can be found at http://www.rapidio.org/education/Roadmap/.

5. Contributing Editors' Perspectives

• Lars Johan Larsson, Modt AB
• Ernie Bergstrom, Crystal Cube Consulting

Will AdvancedTCA Find Markets Outside Telecom?
By Lars Johan Larsson, Modt AB

Will market segments outside telecom also adopt AdvancedTCA as their platform? We have seen such movement in MicroTCA with applications in the industrial, military/defense/aerospace, medical, and enterprise networking areas. Of course, as the “T» in its name implies, AdvancedTCA was developed specifically for telecom with an effort to satisfy that area’s needs and requirements. In practice, there is nothing telecom-specific about the architecture. It could fit anywhere. After all, the basic concept is to provide a high-speed switched backplane and then install all the computing power that fits. The telecom orientation appears in the environmental and availability specifications. The NEBS building standard requires stable systems that will operate in spite of flood, earthquake, and other disasters. The high availability requirement means that no single point of failure will make the systems stop operating, as they will gracefully phase over to standby hardware. See the full article.

AdvancedTCA Blades vs. Rackmount Servers: AC vs. DC Power
By Ernie Bergstrom, Crystal Cube Consulting

AdvancedTCA Newsletter

6. Features

• Hillary Schuler-Jones, Objectivity
• Brad Whittington, Technical Writer
• Mack Bennett, GE Fanuc Intelligent Platforms
• Asif Naseem, GoAhead Software
• AdvancedTCA User Interview with John Linden, Procera Networks

Providing Real-Time Data Management for Network-Centric Operations
By Hillary Schuler-Jones, Objectivity

The changing telecom industry, with its consolidation of major vendors, rapid expansion in overseas markets, and increased demand on network operations, has made it ever more difficult for network providers to deliver reliable real-time services. To overcome these challenges, network operators need access to data management tools capable of adapting to new technologies, changing requirements, and evolving architectures. The tools must be flexible, scalable, and interoperable to satisfy the demands of real-time, network-centric operations. See the full article.

Testing Network Performance with an Emulator
By Brad Whittington, Technical Writer

A network is like the sea — a vast, mysterious, capricious expanse that can be a thing of beauty one minute, and a raging, destructive monster the next. Or at least it can seem that way when you're trying to achieve product performance targets. See the full article.

High-Performance Storage for AdvancedTCA/MicroTCA Systems
By Mack Bennett, GE Fanuc Intelligent Platforms

AdvancedTCA and MicroTCA are rapidly finding applications far beyond telecommunications, such as in military/defense, medical equipment, industrial control, vehicles, and instrumentation. The attractions of advanced processing performance, high speed I/O, excellent thermal and platform management, modularity, and scalability are hard to resist. See the full article.

Integration Is the Key to Open Systems Development!
By Asif Naseem, GoAhead Software

Open standards are wonderful! They allow enterprise developers to produce systems using building blocks from a wide variety of providers. Enterprises have now largely discarded the proprietary architectures that once locked them into individual vendors. We are seeing a similar transition today in telecommunications. See the full article.

AdvancedTCA User Interview of Jon Linden, Procera Networks
With Dr. Lance A. Leventhal, AdvancedTCA Newsletter

1. Why did you choose AdvancedTCA?
AdvancedTCA is an industry standard with reliable performance. The fact that it’s a standard makes our customers feel comfortable with the selection, and they know better what to expect. The reliability is a key requirement. We sell to broadband service providers, and they expect five 9’s which is what you can achieve with ATCA. Finally, by relying on a constantly evolving standard, we can draw on an entire community’s knowledge, experience, and resources as we develop our next-generation product line. See the full interview.

7. UNH-IOL News

The University of New Hampshire's Interoperability Laboratory (UNH-IOL) reports the following recent and upcoming activities at their facility in Durham, New Hampshire. For more information, consult their website at www.iol.unh.edu. Communications Director Chris Volpe (volpe@iol.unh.edu) provides this ongoing service.

August 25-29: Broadband Forum sponsored VDSL2 Chip Vendor Plugfest

September 15-19: FCIA (Fibre Channel Industry Association) sponsored FCoE Fibre Channel over Ethernet) Plugfest

September 22-26: IBTA (InfiniBand Trade Association) Plugfest

September 25-October 3: OFA (Open Fabrics Alliance) Interop Event

8. Financial News

Freescale Semiconductor Second Quarter

Freescale Semiconductor reported that sales for the second quarter of 2008 were $1.47 billion, compared to $1.38 billion in the second quarter of 2007. With expenses, the operating loss and net loss for the second quarter of 2008 were $137 million and $184 million, respectively, compared to $268 million and $288 million, respectively, during the second quarter of 2007. Excluding the aforementioned expenses, operating earnings were $234 million and EBITDA was $368 million in the second quarter of 2008. This compares to operating earnings of $159 million and EBITDA of $311 million in the second quarter of 2007. Microcontroller net sales were $460 million in the second quarter of 2008, compared to $458 million in the first quarter of 2008 and $472 million in the second quarter of 2007. Networking and multimedia net sales were $312 million in the second quarter of 2008, compared to $269 million in the first quarter of 2008 and $263 million in the second quarter of 2007.

Nortel Networks Second Quarter

Nortel reported revenues of $2.6 billion, up slightly from a year ago, despite a slight fall in sales in its Carrier Networks division, its largest business unit by sales. Gross margin was 43.1 percent, up from 41.1 percent last year, while operating profits were $45 million, compared with an operating loss of $28 million a year earlier. Nortel reported a net loss of $113 million, or $0.23 per share, including a $67 million restructuring charge. Nortel showed strengthening business in Asia/Pacific, where revenues were $584 million, up nearly 74 percent compared with last year. Revenues in the United States, EMEA (Europe, Middle East, and Africa), and Latin America all decreased year-on-year. CDMA sales dropped to $446 million from $494 million, while sales of circuit and packet voice systems fell to $144 million from $162 million last year.

Nokia Siemens Networks Second Quarter

Nokia Siemens Networks, which reports its results as part of parent Nokia Corporation's earnings release, reported second-quarter revenues of $6.45 billion, an 18 percent improvement compared with a year earlier (its first quarter of operations), and 20 percent better than the first quarter of this year. Its operating loss (including one-time costs and special items) was $74.5 million, compared to last year's $2 billion operating loss. Excluding the one-time costs and special items associated with the ongoing integration process, Nokia Siemens achieved an operating profit of $244 million, compared with a loss a year earlier of $572 million. Year-on-year revenue growth was strongest in Latin America, followed by the Middle East and Africa, Greater China, and Europe.

Actel Acquires Pigeon Point Systems

Actel announced that it has acquired Pigeon Point Systems, a privately-held supplier of telecommunications computing architecture (TCA) management components. The acquisition is not expected to have a material effect on Actel’s financial condition or results of operations. Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed. ‘Pigeon Point is the de facto standard in the TCA arena,” said John East, president and CEO of Actel. “As TCA experiences rapid deployment across the increasingly power-sensitive telecommunications, military and industrial markets, the merger of their market and technology leadership with Actel’s innovative power and system management solutions gives us a tremendous opportunity to capture a significant portion of the TCA system market.”

9. Classifieds

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