AdvancedTCA Newsletter

What’s New in AdvancedTCA

The AdvancedTCA Summit has been scheduled for October 27-29, 2009 at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, California. The Summit will cover the current state of AdvancedTCA through keynotes, half-day forums, half-day tutorials, and paper and panel sessions. There will also be exhibit space. The deadline to submit a proposal to present at the Summit is June 26. For information about submitting a proposal, visit www.advancedtcasummit.com/English/Conference/Call_for_Presentations.html.

Table of Contents

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

AdvancedTCA Acronyms

1. Market Watch Taking Out Cost Matters More Now Than Ever Before, By Eric Heikkila, Contributing Editor, and Director of Embedded Hardware Practice, Venture Development Corporation (VDC) The communications industry is caught in the current worldwide major economic downturn. Service providers are facing tapped out consumers and businesses that are rapidly scaling down expenses. They are therefore squeezing their infrastructure suppliers to remain viable. The Network Equipment Providers (NEPs), in turn, are looking for ways to reduce their own costs drastically. Not surprisingly, embedded platform vendors are realizing that, to win business in today’s environment, they must be able to cut development costs for their customers (the NEPs). To do this, they are increasing the depth and breadth of their application support. They often make off the shelf packages available, such as application specific development boards or software toolkits. Meanwhile, NEPs are obviously looking to reduce their own operating expenses while simultaneously adding more value for their customers. To do this, they need more support from their embedded solution providers, i.e., higher levels of value add in the less differentiated or ‘pre-competitive’ feature sets and services. Let us be, as they say, perfectly clear here. NEPs do NOT want their embedded platform suppliers to develop applications. On the contrary, they want suppliers to provide them with a higher level of integrated platform that will free up their own development resources. As for everything else beneath the application, it’s all on the table. NEPs must embrace the open standards ecosystem built around the idea of reducing development costs on undifferentiated platforms. It will enable them to place more emphasis on their revenue generating applications and use their engineering resources more productively. As they evaluate the ecosystem, NEPs should be looking for full solution providers. Such providers are capable not just of bringing to market a system that fully integrates components, software, middleware, and application services/support, but also of managing the entire value chain (giving the NEPs the proverbial one throat to choke). It also means demanding more application expertise from embedded platform suppliers – not to build the application, but to allow the NEPs to get started on it faster and farther along in the development process. Embedded suppliers must offer fully integrated solutions and more application support and enablement. And they must be able to demonstrate and prove to customers that they really can reduce their development costs significantly. This is not a new trend, since it has obviously been present in the market for several years now (at least since the tech meltdown of 2000-2001).  However, VDC believes that the current economic environment is rapidly accelerating it. In fact, VDC thinks that such acceleration over the next few years will force a redefinition of the embedded platform supplier – NEP/OEM relationship. Eric Heikkila can be reached at eric@atcanewsletter.com.

Annual Sponsors Annual Sponsors

2. Industry News

Emerson Network Power has launched a new bladed server platform based on open-standards AdvancedTCA technology, the Katana 2000. The Katana 2000 is designed to provide network equipment providers with improved serviceability, power and space efficiency over typical rack mount server-based solutions for tasks that store, process and forward large amounts of data in a wide range of applications where reliability or bill-per-minute are critical. Target applications include internet-based media and content provisioning, data processing and logging in industrial installations and oil and gas exploration, surveillance infrastructure in security applications, server platform for electronic warfare, image processing and data management in medical applications, and data retrieving, processing and storing in scientific or large physics experiments. The 3U high, 19 inch wide server can be supplied with one or two high performance ATCA-based server blades, each featuring two of the latest quad-core Intel Xeon processor 5500 series devices rated for speeds up to 2.53 GHz with up to 48GB DDR3 memory and two individually hot-swappable SAS hard drives. The platform integrates chassis, cooling, power distribution, and shelf management into a high availability platform solution. For more information, visit www.EmersonNetworkPower.com/EmbeddedComputing.

Cavium Networks announced the OCTEON II Internet Application Processor (IAP) family of multi-core MIPS64 processors. The OCTEON II IAP offers up to 4x performance over the existing and widely deployed OCTEON Plus processor family, with more than twice the performance/watt and performance/dollar. In addition, the new product family adds new application acceleration engines. The new OCTEON II IAP processor family is designed to fuel the voice, video and data convergence driven by cloud computing, virtualization, HD video over IP, Web 2.0 and mobile 3G/4G applications which require a many fold increase in packet processing, secure application delivery and quality of service (QoS) performance. For more information, visit www.caviumnetworks.com.

Radisys announced the Procelerant RMS420-5520DT, a high performance server platform that supports two new E5500 Series quad-core Intel Xeon processors. The RMS420-5520DT has the potential to provide equivalent processing power to multiple current-generation servers. In addition, the RMS420-5520DT server supports up to three high power co-processors, such as GP-GPU cards, that can accelerate processing of algorithms for image or signal processing by a factor of 10-30X more than the server alone. Supporting multiple co-processors makes the Procelerant RMS420-5520DT the ideal platform for parallel processing, a key requirement for many medical imaging, industrial automation and test & measurement applications. Additionally, the RMS420-5520DT offers an optional on-board RAID controller that allows end users to manage storage over multiple drives. Various drive bay options are also available, allowing the RMS420-5520DT to be populated with up to eight disk drives. At only 20 inches deep, it can be mounted in tight quarters and it has a low, 46 dBA acoustic noise level at full load. For more information, visit www.radisys.com.

Radisys also announced the release of its Promentum ATCA-4500 single board computer (SBC) utilizing the new Intel Xeon processor 5500 series. The ATCA-4500 combines high performance with large memory capacity and expansion flexibility to address advanced control, gateway and telecom server functions for a broad set of 4G applications including LTE (Long-Term Evolution), WiMAX, NMS (Network Management Systems), and IMS (IP Multimedia Subsystem). RadiSys’ ATCA-4500 has been optimized to meet Telecom Equipment Manufacturer (TEM) requirements for easily integrating into an existing ATCA chassis and for supporting multiple storage options and OS virtualization.  The ATCA-4500 will be available as a building block or fully validated and integrated into the RadiSys family of platforms which include 2, 5, 14 and 16 slot systems. For more information, visit www.radisys.com.

Kontron released its latest AdvancedTCA 10 Gigabit node blade – the Kontron AT8050 – designed with the new Intel Xeon 5500 Platform with the latest 45nm quad-core processors. Kontron chose to design with a single quad-core Intel Xeon processor L5518 with a 60W power envelope, as opposed to a dual CPU configuration. The benefits of this are that – clients can still make use of one available AdvancedMC slot for further feature extensions; clients can maximize the amount of available memory at 24GB DDR3 Registered ECC VLP SDRAM and up to 48GB DDR3 once available; and, most importantly, clients can upgrade their existing node blades with the Kontron AT8050 without having to upgrade their chassis platforms, which they would have to do to be able to cool several dual-socket-designed quad-core node blades.

Kontron also announced its intentions to design with the OCTEON II processors from Cavium Networks. As a Cavium PACE (Partnership to Accelerate Customer End-solutions) member, Kontron will leverage the success of its AM42xx series of AdvancedMC Intelligent I/O modules that are designed with OCTEON Plus multi-core processors, and introduce its next generation modules using the OCTEON II processor family. Clients will be able to upgrade their systems to support their multiple network infrastructure equipment such as media gateway- and wireless base station-type applications.

Advantech announced in separate releases, two new 10GE-enabled products exclusively tuned for the quad-core Intel Xeon Processor 5500 Series. The Advantech FWA-6500 adds a new performance point to high end multi-core security and network application platforms. With 8-core / 16-threaded performance the FWA-6500 is able to handle massive throughput thanks to Intel’s highest performing extended lifecycle processors to date. It comes with two quad-core Intel Xeon Processors in an enterprise server form factor aimed at the next wave of high performance networking applications. Network connectivity is fast and flexible with up to 16 front accessible GE ports supported by 4 quad Ethernet modules based on the Intel 82576 or with multiple dual 10GbE modules based on the brand new Intel 82599 dual 10 GbE controller. For more information, visit www.advantech.com.

CommAgility announced the AMC-3C87F-GPS, a single width, full-size Advanced Mezzanine Card for 4G wireless PHY layer processing. The AdvancedMC card includes three Remote Radio Head (RRH) interfaces, an integrated GPS receiver and an OCXO option for timing holdover. By providing this extra functionality, the new module is optimized to significantly reduce system cost and complexity for next-generation wireless base stations. Three industry-standard CPRI/OBSAI optical SFP interfaces support direct connections to Remote Radio Heads for full three sector operation without chaining connections. To provide the highest performance for WiMAX and LTE applications, the module includes three Texas Instruments TCI6487 multicore DSPs running at 1 or 1.2 GHz, as well as a Xilinx Virtex-5 FPGA. The high performance DSPs means that the card has the potential to also include the MAC layer on a single AMC module. For more information, visit www.commagility.com.

GoAhead Software announced SAFfire 3.0. SAFfire 3.0 highlights include an implementation of the Service Availability Forum (SA Forum) open specifications with a spotlight on support of the Platform Management Service. Along with SAFfire 3.0, the company announced the GoAhead SA Forum Ecosystem (SAFE) Program and the GoAhead SA Forum Architectural Design Service. This combination of technology, expertise and partner ecosystem gives customers a low-risk approach for ensuring high availability of their mission-critical systems. SAFfire features core functionality to monitor and manage redundant hardware and software system resources to ensure 99.999% or better availability. Millisecond, stateful failover and checkpointing to preserve application data enable customers to ensure uninterrupted service. For more information, visit www.goahead.com.

Tundra Semiconductor announced its new Serial RapidIO System Modeling Tool. The new System Modeling Tool allows wireless, military, imaging, video infrastructure and storage OEMs to unleash the full performance potential and features of RapidIO interconnect to enhance system level performance, optimize architecture and reduce power consumption. Tundra's RapidIO System Modeling Tool improves end-to-end packet transfers by modeling not only the switch fabric, but also the behavior of the endpoints in the system, allowing designers to plan and examine the behavior of end-to-end transactions. Customers can simulate various traffic flows throughout the system to uncover the optimal priorities for system traffic flow performance.

SANBlaze Technology announced the release of its SB-RTM431, a new AdvancedTCA (ATCA) Rear Transition Module (RTM). The SB-RTM331 features a SAS expander and two removable SAS, SATA or SSD disk drives that fit wholly within the RTM thermal footprint. According to SANBlaze, the SB-RTM431 will be the only RTM on the market that provides a deterministic cooling environment for serviceable disk drives. SANBlaze Technology is offering the SB-RTM431in conjunction with its ATCA1000, a 10Gb iSCSI and NAS storage blade. With the new RTM, the ATCA1000 boasts 6 fully serviceable disk drives (four on AMC modules and two on the RTM). SANBlaze is also working with several OEM to adapt the new disk FRU designs into other proprietary RTM designs. For more information, visit www.sanblaze.com.

Continuous Computing announced the addition of a Snow3G accelerator to the company’s FlexPacket ATCA-PP50 packet processing blade and FlexTCA pre-integrated 10GbE ATCA platforms. The addition of Snow3G encryption to the company’s Long Term Evolution (LTE) products will enable network equipment providers (NEPs) and mobile operators to leverage the latest block cipher algorithm for authentication and network security while complying with the Third Generation Partnership Project’s (3GPP’s) rigorous specifications for encryption. By providing an optimized hardware-based Snow3G accelerator, Continuous Computing’s new combination provides a high-performance, low-cost solution that supports greater than 2Gbps with 200-byte packets. With Snow3G encryption, both the PP50 and FlexTCA will support enhanced 3GPP security requirements for LTE network elements such as eNodeB and Mobility Management Entity (MME). For more information, visit www.ccpu.com/products/.

GE Fanuc Intelligent Platform announced the Telum 3001 Graphics Adapter AdvancedMC. Designed to deliver substantially more graphics performance and functionality than has previously been available for MicroTCA and AdvancedTCA, the Telum 3001 includes such advanced features as provision for dual digital and/or analog displays, very high resolutions and support for ‘ganged’ (configuring multiple graphics cards on the same platform) operation, giving even greater performance. These features make the Telum 3001 ideal for demanding video- and still image applications such as design engineering, board development and debugging, laboratory analysis and testing, and medical environments such as monitoring where the requirement is to provide very high levels of image detail and to do so on two screens  (for example, side by side comparison). For more information, visit www.gefanucembedded.com.

JumpGen Systems announced the TPM-100, an AdvancedMC (PrAMC) platform based on the Tilera TILEPro64 processor. The TPM-100 offers 64 cores of general purpose and signal processing compute coupled with over 20 Gbps of full-duplex I/O. The TPM-100 PrAMC offers new levels of performance enabled by the new TILEPro64 processor design features and the Tilera Multi-Core Development Environment (MDE) version 2.0. The board’s dual 10Gbps Ethernet interfaces and 64 processor cores make it ideal for hosting high-bandwidth embedded communication applications such as wireless radio network controllers (RNCs), multimedia gateways, media transcoders/transraters, session border controllers, modular servers, firewalls, and deep-packet inspection appliances. For more information, visit www.JumpGen.com.

LSI Corporation announced four new families of Tarari Content and Security “plug-and-play” processor boards. The boards are designed to meet the deep packet inspection requirements of entry-level to high-performance networks. The new boards fit standard PCIe, mini-PCIe, mini-PCI and Advanced Mezzanine Card (AdvancedMC) form factors, enabling Tarari Content and Security Processor solutions to be easily integrated with existing network security, quality of service, content-based billing and bandwidth management applications. For more information, visit www.lsi.com.

XTech has announced integral extensions for full-size AMC and MicroTCA modules. The customizable extensions offer a solution for chassis cable management. The extension can be labeled, if needed. The front-protruding wall can be re-configured to meet a wide range of mechanical design specifications. For more information, visit www.xtech-outside.com.

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

Repair…and Other Minor Sins
“And freedom shall awhile repair, to dwell a weeping hermit there!” – William Collins

Designing equipment is a fascinating business to most engineers. Even installation and configuration have their fans. But repair and maintenance do not draw nearly as much attention or enthusiasm. Whether it is the gear you produce or the gear you use, maintaining and repairing it is a mundane necessity.

Fortunately, one can contract out much of the work. Repair services will handle the job for a wide variety of equipment. They can not only provide a central place to send all your non-working test equipment, but they can also offer an alternative to setting up your own repair network. For example, Inter-Commercial Business Systems (or ICBS, not to be confused with a long-range missile!) has been providing service and repair for the telecom industry since 1989 (back when dinosaurs ruled the earth!). They offer a state of the art repair center and an online repair service. You can also contract with them to service your equipment. They handle almost all well-known brands of both telecom and test equipment, including Agilent, Alcatel-Lucent, Cisco, Nortel, and Tektronix. They even provide used equipment. For more information, consult their Website at www.icbsrepair.com or call them at (800) 886-6642.

The author would like to thank Sales Director Clyde Ross for describing his company’s services at a recent TelcoTV Conference.

High-Speed Backplanes – A Through Y and Now on to Z

High-speed backplanes, such as the multi-GHz ones required in the highest-performing AdvancedTCA systems, are not easy to develop. Signal integrity is difficult to achieve, and issues such as stubs, insertion losses, vias, and impedance mismatches become major obstacles at high frequencies.

What is a designer to do?  Well, if you have tried almost everything in the alphabet, you may not have considered “Z”. It’s a new company, called Z-Plane, with a new high-speed interconnection and packaging technology.  It supposedly provides high performance at competitive cost and a complete high-speed system solution. It can produce 12.5 to 25 Gb/s of throughput.  The interconnection is a circuit board located perpendicular to the backplane; it projects through the backplane via pins or other methods, and establishes a direct connection to the daughter cards (eliminating vias and stubs). It reduces signal insertion loss, signal noise (crosstalk), and thermal problems, as well as increasing reliability and reducing cost. The company has prototypes now and is working on commercial performance testing with an emphasis on dual-star 16-slot AdvancedTCA. For more information, contact President Chuck Byer at ccbyer@z-planeinc.com.

Looking at the IPTV Market?

According to Strategy Analytics, Internet Protocol Television (IPTV) revenue will grow from $694 million in 2007 to $14 billion in 2012. Obviously, such a fast-growing market will need a huge amount of equipment, which is why one sees companies like Alcatel-Lucent, Cisco, Ericsson, Nortel, and Nokia Siemens offering products.

Need to know more? A great source of information is Althos Books (www.althosbooks.com), which offers the latest books, magazines, and on-line references. Their IPTV Basics Book provides a complete overview of IPTV systems, describing services and features, IP audio, MPEG, distribution networks, end user devices, and digital rights management. It includes valuable appendixes of acronyms (you’ll surely need that to understand anything in the area) and standards bodies. They also have a book on IPTV business opportunities and a free IPTV magazine (sign up at www.iptvmagazine.com). They even feature an online IPTV Dictionary with over 10,000 terms and definitions. Highly recommended!

The author would like to thank Althos Publisher/Editor Lawrence Harte and Associate Editor Michele Chandler for discussing their products and services at a recent TelcoTV show. 

4. Organization Updates

SCOPE Alliance Launches New Web Site and New Documents
By Tero Mustala and Leslie Guth, SCOPE Alliance

The SCOPE Alliance has recently launched its new Web site at www.scope-alliance.org. It serves as a resource for the commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) ecosystem. The idea is to present the Network Equipment Provider (NEP) perspective on open carrier-grade base platforms through technical position papers and industry white papers. The Web site also enables building block vendors to easily locate and access SCOPE’s latest technical output. See the full article.

Recent CP-TA Activities
By Sven Freudenfeld, CP-TA/Kontron

The Communications Platforms Trade Association (CP-TA) recently reached an important milestone in its mission to continually improve off-the-shelf interoperability for Advanced, MicroTCA, and Advanced components.

CP-TA has released updated (3.0) versions of its flagship interoperability documents, the Interoperability Compliance Document (ICD) and the Test Procedure Manual (TPM). They outline industry-standard criteria and testing procedures for AdvancedTCA building blocks. See the full article.

OpenSAF News
By Alan Meyer, President, OpenSAF

The OpenSAF Technical workgroup is gearing up for two major events. One is the release of Version 3 of the software, currently in Beta, and expected to be in GA (General Availability) in late May. Also on June 3-4, the OpenSAF technical community is holding its second annual Developer Days Technical Conference in Shenzhen, China, hosted by Huawei Technologies. See the full article.

Service Availability Forum Expands Its Mission to Include Education
By Asif Naseem, SA Forum

In an age of rapid service deployment and increased focus on uninterrupted service availability, the re-use of highly available applications and the integration of third-party software are critical requirements. The Service Availability (SA) Forum has created specifications for carrier-grade service availability that benefit Network Equipment Providers (NEPs) and help foster a commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) ecosystem. With initial adoptions well underway, the Forum has expanded its charter to include educational materials that help developers quickly ascertain the benefits of the specifications and how to use them. See the full article.

Announcements

The PCI Industrial Computer Manufacturers Group (PICMG) has released the Air Cooled Rugged MicroTCA specification. The specification extends temperature, shock and vibration ranges, thereby extending the use of the platform beyond its original Telecommunications focus to address applications requiring enhanced environmental performance. Industries serving the needs of transportation, industrial control, and outdoor communications infrastructure can now take advantage of MicroTCA's small footprint, high compute power and communications bandwidth, and managed architecture. 

Work within PICMG to provide an even more robust MicroTCA platform continues, with members working on a hardened, conduction-cooled version of MicroTCA that is intended for use in military and aerospace applications. The work is expected to be completed later this year.

PICMG announced a new initiative to expand the capabilities of the AdvancedTCA platform to address additional markets beyond its telecom base. This new effort will be addressing additional features including double-wide boards, enhancements to power and cooling, optimizations for non-NEBS environments, allowances for double-sided shelves and other enhancements while maintaining forward and backward compatibility with existing AdvancedTCA products. This work will be performed by a new subcommittee and will facilitate the use of AdvancedTCA in additional markets, including cloud computing and network data centers. The new subcommittee is open to all PICMG Executive and Associate members. Interested parties are invited to join PICMG and contribute to the effort.

PICMG announced the formation of the xTCA for Physics Coordinating Committee. This subcommittee was initiated by an international group of physics labs that are using or actively exploring usage of both AdvancedTCA and MicroTCA platforms in experimental research machines and detectors in such diverse fields as high energy, photon, astro, fusion and medical physics. The Committee will tackle AdvancedMC channel usage models, Rear Transition Modules definitions, timing synchronization and the generic design of AdvancedTCA and AdvancedMC modules needed to allow PICMG’s xTCA family of products to be used in the broad physics community. 

For information about PICMG membership, or to find out how to obtain PICMG specifications, visit the PICMG website at www.picmg.org or call PICMG headquarters at (781) 246-9318.

5. Contributing Editors' Perspectives

Ernie Bergstrom, Crystal Cube Consulting
Tom Cox, RapidIO Trade Association

MicroTCA Makes WIN-T Muster
By Ernie Bergstrom, Crystal Cube Consulting

Need More Than 10G per Channel or Better Traffic Control?
By Tom Cox, RapidIO Trade Association

• The growth in AdvancedTCA and MicroTCA applications is being driven by demand for cost effective, high performance systems. RapidIO is meeting the needs of current designs, but what about future projects with higher performance needs?

The RapidIO Trade Association started nine years ago to evolve, support, and promote the RapidIO standard, the only interconnect designed specifically to meet the embedded market’s high-performance needs. Since then, the standard has matured and is globally deployed across the communications, military/aerospace, storage, and industrial markets. See the full article.

AdvancedTCA Newsletter

6. Features

• Karl Wale, Continuous Computing
  
• Brian Carr, Emerson Network Power
  
• Paul Stevens and Peter Marek, Advantech
  
• Eric Carmes, 6WIND
  
• Interview with Joe McDevitt, PICMG

AdvancedTCA Support of Wireless Flow-Based Routing
By Karl Wale, Continuous Computing

Long Term Evolution (LTE), Femtocells and WiMAX are all major developments in the wireless industry. Many operators now offer “always connected” data-driven services. How must the core network evolve to remain efficient and cost-effective? How can it cope with huge increases in customers and traffic?  See the full article.

Developing AdvancedTCA Systems with Large Storage Requirements
By Brian Carr, Emerson Network Power

AdvancedTCA is being adopted for server-based applications with large storage requirements, such as billing engines, authentication databases, service delivery platforms, and IPTV content caching. These applications can roughly be divided into ones involving databases and ones involving content and streaming storage. See the full article.

Developing Cost-Effective MicroTCA Solutions
By Paul Stevens and Peter Marek, Advantech

Vendors trying to reduce MicroTCA system costs have developed several innovative AMC infrastructure arrangements. Simplifying or eliminating the MicroTCA Carrier Hub (MCH) and substituting intelligent Field Replaceable Units (FRUs) can lower costs substantially. But can such approaches meet the price targets required in such applications as wireless basestations, VoIP equipment, converged application platforms, and security appliances? See the full article.

AdvancedTCA System Design and Integration for Next-Generation Networks
By Eric Carmes, 6WIND

System design has changed dramatically over the years to involve a mix of experts who collaborate to reach a common goal. Even the largest companies no longer build systems from scratch, instead relying on system integration, components, and solutions from outside vendors. In the era of next-generation networks (NGN), carriers are focusing on revenue-producing services, while depending on the tier-1 equipment manufacturers to provide a complete infrastructure solution. And integrators are delivering complete systems based on key hardware and software technologies developed by component providers. See the full article.

Interview with Joe McDevitt, PICMG Vice President of Marketing
By Lance A. Leventhal, Technical Editor 

1. What are the key reasons why you chose to take on the job of PICMG’s VP of Marketing?
   
   Any organization – be it a standards body organization (SBO), company, or even a church – typically follows an almost Bell Curve-like pattern of birth, stagnation, and death. If you recognize a stagnation point and make adjustments, the organization can experience a rebirth and renewed growth. I was concerned, as new competitive SBOs appeared with “hard-core” PICMG members in their ranks, that PICMG could be heading toward a stagnation point. I thought new marketing efforts would bring fresh ideas and approaches to help PICMG experience a re-birth. I am constantly struggling with my internal “Idea Man” who has many ideas about how other people should do their jobs, but no inclination to actually do the work. So I decided to run to fight that inclination.  See the full interview.

7. Financial News

Acquisitions

Nokia Makes Offer to Acquire Large Segment of Nortel Carrier Network Group
The Wall Street Journal reported that Nokia Siemens has made an offer to acquire a large segment of Nortel Networks, including the CDMA group. Nortel filed for bankruptcy protection in January. Nokia’s bid includes Nortel's business in VoIP and a R&D unit focused on the LTE wireless technology. Genband, a provider of telecom infrastructure products, is formulating a bid for the piece of Nortel's carrier networks group that makes digital switches and media gateways. Genband sells gateways that are distributed by Nortel, and last year acquired the gateway business of Nokia Siemens.

IDT Acquires Tundra Semiconductor
IDT (Integrated Device Technology, Inc) and Tundra Semiconductor Corporation announced the two companies have entered into a definitive acquisition agreement pursuant to which IDT will acquire Tundra for CDN$6.25 per share, for an aggregate purchase price of approximately CDN$120.8 million. "IDT is excited about the proposed acquisition of Tundra. We look forward to better serving our customers by utilizing the Tundra core strengths in serial switching and bridging using PCI Express, RapidIO and VME, with the existing IDT mixed signal product portfolio," said Dr. Ted Tewksbury, president and CEO at IDT.

NetLogic Acquires IDT’s Network Search Engine Products
NetLogic Microsystems announced that it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire certain assets associated with IDT’s network search engine products. Under the terms of the agreement, NetLogic Microsystems will pay IDT $90 million, plus the cost of inventory on hand on the closing date. The acquisition includes IDT’s search accelerator, network search engine and route accelerator product families and related patents and intellectual property. These products and technologies will complement and further expand NetLogic Microsystems’ existing portfolio of knowledge-based processors, NETLite processors and network search engines, and will further strengthen the relationships with NetLogic Microsystems’ customer base.

Ixia Acquires Catapult Communications Corporation
Ixia announced that it has signed a definitive agreement with Catapult Communications Corporation, under which Ixia will acquire Catapult for $9.25 per share in cash. The transaction is valued at approximately $105 million. The acquisition is expected to close in the third quarter. Catapult’s 3G and 4G wireless networking test solutions complement Ixia’s line of IP performance test systems and service verification platforms. With this acquisition, Ixia will be able to provide a single source solution for testing converged multiplay IP services over wireless and wireline networks to new and existing customers, specifically telecom equipment manufacturers and global service providers.

Financial Statements

Cisco Third Quarter
Cisco reported its third quarter results for the period ended April 25, 2009. Cisco reported net sales of $8.2 billion, down from $9.8 billion for the same period last year. Cisco's third-quarter profit came in at $1.35 billion, or 23 cents a share. That compared with a profit of $1.77 billion, or 29 cents a share, for the comparable period in fiscal 2008. Enterprise orders were down 27% and service-provider orders were down 33%. The company projected fourth-quarter revenue to drop 17 to 20 percent from the year-earlier period.

Alcatel-Lucent First Quarter
First quarter revenue decreased 6.9% year-over-year and 27.4% sequentially to Euro 3.598 billion. At constant currency exchange rates, revenue fell by 11.2% year-over-year and 28.3% sequentially, with a mixed performance among each of the four segments. On the one hand, Carrier and Enterprise revenues declined at double-digit rates year-over-year at constant currency, reflecting capital constraints in fixed and mobile access, switching and enterprise voice telephony, only partly offset by the growth in IP, W-CDMA and submarine optics. On the other hand, Applications software revenues grew at a mid-single digit rate at constant currency while Services revenues grew in the high teens. From a geographic standpoint, the decline is largely attributable to North America where revenues decreased 28% year-over-year at constant currency and to a lesser extent Asia Pacific (-8%), while Europe (-1.5%) and the rest of the world (+1%) showed good resilience.

Radisys First Quarter
RadiSys Corporation announced revenues of $77.6 million for the quarter ended March 31, 2009, down 9.8% versus the same quarter last year. The Company had a GAAP net loss of $40.1 million or $1.73 per share in the first quarter, versus a net loss of $7.2 million or $0.32 per share in the same quarter last year. The GAAP net loss was impacted by a non-cash charge of $42.0 million or $1.82 per share for a tax valuation allowance against the Company’s US deferred tax assets. First quarter non-GAAP net income was $4.9 million or $0.19 per diluted share, versus a net loss of $0.8 million or $0.03 per share in the same quarter last year. Revenue was $77.6 million and was down 9.8% from the prior year. Revenues were lower due to reduced demand in the Company’s traditional wireless business as well as softness in the Company’s Commercial markets. These declines were partially offset by higher revenues in next-generation communications products. Q2 revenue is expected to be between $72 and $78 million, with projected growth in next-generation communication revenues, partially offset by lower expected traditional communications revenues and ongoing softness in the company’s commercial markets.

Cavium First Quarter
Cavium Networks announced financial results for the first quarter of 2009 ending March 31, 2009. Revenue in the first quarter of 2009 was $20.4 million, an 8% sequential decrease from the $22.2 million reported for the fourth quarter of 2008 and an increase of 11% from the $18.3 million reported for the first quarter of last year. Net loss for the first quarter of 2009, on a GAAP basis, was $6.5 million, or $0.16 per share, compared to a net loss of $4.4 million, or $0.11 per share in the fourth quarter of 2008, and net income of $2.0 million, or $0.05 per share in the first quarter of last year. "Sales during the first quarter were negatively impacted by the continuing weakness in the Enterprise and Data Center segments," said Syed Ali, president and CEO of Cavium Networks.

Enea First Quarter
During the first quarter Enea Group's net sales decreased 2 percent to SEK 214.3 (218.6) million compared with the same quarter 2008. The Enea Group's operating profit, before non-recurring items, amounted to SEK -5.3 (18.7) million and after non-recurring items to SEK -36.7 million. Financial performance declined mainly due to a lower consulting and product revenue from mobile phone manufacturers and a negative trend in R&D costs. Earnings per share for the first quarter amounted to SEK -1.40 (0.60). During the second quarter a restructuring program will be implemented in Products, e.g. increased use of the organization in Romania. The program aims to decrease costs by SEK 50 million on an annual basis and will gain full effect as of January 2010. The Group expects to report a profit before restructuring costs for each of the remaining quarters in 2009 as well as a positive cash-flow from operating activities for the full year 2009.

8. 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. PR and Communications Manager Jason Walls (jwalls@iol.unh.edu) provides this ongoing service.

June 22-26: Group test event for Power over Ethernet (IEEE 802.3)
August 24-28: Broadband Forum sponsored VDSL2 System Integrator Plugfest
September 28 - October 2: Broadband Forum sponsored TR-069 Interoperability Plugfest

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10. Newsletter Archive

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