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.

In such an environment, controlling system development costs requires using as many existing building blocks as possible. Standards have helped provide interoperable off-the-shelf hardware, middleware, and software, in turn helping reduce costs and remove design obstacles.

Multicore, AdvancedTCA, and Linux Help Reduce Costs

Within a few years, billions of fixed and mobile devices will be connected via the Internet. New innovative Internet services based mainly on images and video will be launched, and intelligent networks will be required to differentiate service offerings.

As a result, the communications layer for NGN will need tremendous performance and sophistication, and green computing will be essential to limit power consumption. At the same time, infrastructure deployment schedules must be shortened for faster revenue generation.

At the heart of all this is the adoption of several key standards. Multicore technology provides the needed processing capabilities and offers a high level of integration with lower power consumption. AdvancedTCA standards enable the building of carrier-grade systems that include both computing and communications elements and fulfill industry requirements for scalability, modularity, and high availability. Linux is becoming a de facto standard as a flexible, open, and efficient operating system with carrier grade capabilities to expedite developments for stringent applications.

Multicore-Based Communications Layer

All these standards improve performance and reduce costs, but software design complexities persist, making development and integration difficult. The end result has been to hinder multicore deployment. On top of existing standards, and because the communications layer has become mission critical, there are new requirements for it to be designed specifically in a way that simplifies and expedites multicore-based designs. It must:

• Efficiently implement fast path packet processing to take advantage high performance achievable with multicores
• Implement a complete, comprehensive, and ready to use set of networking features including IPv4 and IPv6 forwarding, L2, VLAN, IPsec, QoS, IP reassembly, filtering, NAT, multicast, ROHC, flow inspection, and IPv6 tunneling
• Be fully integrated with the control plane OS to maximize software reuse and hide multicore complexities
• Run on market-leading multicore platforms with unified high-level APIs for interfacing built-in accelerators such as crypto engines
• Provide an open architecture to ease integration of differentiating and value added features

Focusing on this layer reduces development time and costs significantly and accelerates time-to-market for the efficient, integrated, low cost equipment the NGN market needs.

Eric Carmes is Founder and CEO of 6WIND. You can contact him at eric.carmes@6wind.com.