AdvancedTCA Newsletter |
Vol. 6, No. 2 Apr-May 2010 Newsletter circulation: 14,012 |
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Announcements 1st Annual Server Design Summit The Server Design Summit is scheduled for September 22-23 at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, California. The Summit will encompass the latest in designing for next-generation virtualized servers. Attendees will learn how to reduce server and storage costs, simplify maintenance, handle ever-expanding demands, automate server management, implement security, solve power and cooling problems, and more. Visit www.serverdesignsummit.com for additional information. Table of Contents
2. Industry NewsKontron has introduced the MicroTCA platforms OM6090D and OM7090D, which conform to MTCA.1, and are specifically designed for high-end AdvancedMCs. They feature a 10 Gbit/s Ethernet switched backplane enabling the highest data flow rate. In their maximum configuration, both systems can be fitted with up to 36 Intel XEON processor cores and a full 216 GB of RAM. Applications include infrastructure nodes for mobile telephony, public safety engineering, medical, and military. Typical end-point applications include “Network in a box” or Rural Utilities Service (RUS) for rural and remote communication systems supporting CDMA, GSM, 3G and VoIP across HLR/HSS, RNC, and Gateway applications. The Kontron platforms are also ideal for Rapidly Deployable Mobile Networks, radar, sonar, and video data processing. These applications will benefit from the densely-packed computing power of hot-swappable AdvancedMC modules and board-to-board dual-star switching beyond 1 GBit/s. Wind River has introduced an integrated Network Acceleration Platform designed to deliver ultra-fast IP packet forwarding performance for telecommunications network infrastructure equipment. The Network Acceleration Platform provides a fast packet acceleration solution, leveraging multiple cores for the control and data planes to deliver multiple Gigabit Ethernet wire-speed performance. The data plane includes a network acceleration engine tuned for IPv4/IPv6 packet forwarding protocols running on a Wind River Executive (a small footprint operating system optimized for specific tasks) while the control plane is managed by a choice of carrier grade operating systems, either Wind River Linux or VxWorks. The platform also includes a lightweight hypervisor to provide carrier-grade protection for software running on individual cores. Emerson Network Power extended its portfolio of embedded single-board computers based on Intel Core i7 processors with the launch of its first 3U CompactPCI blade, the CPCI7203. This is also the company’s first product to support the new CompactPCI PlusIO specification (PICMG 2.30), which supports data transfer rates of up to 5 Gbps, a significant increase over previous CompactPCI backplane specifications. Designed for a wide range of high performance tasks in space-constrained environments, the Emerson Network Power CPCI7203 is ideal for industrial, medical and military/aerospace applications, such as railway control, semiconductor manufacturing, robotics, image processing, vehicle communications and on-board flight information systems. The Emerson Network Power CPCI7203 features up to 4GB soldered ECC DDR3 memory and 256KB non-volatile Ferroelectic Random Access Memory (FeRAM). For additional information about CompactPCI technology from Emerson Network Power, visit www.emersonnetworkpower.com/EmbeddedComputing?8109C=United%20States. Astute Networks and RadiSys announced that the two companies have entered into an original equipment manufacturer (OEM) agreement to supply AdvancedTCA solutions to communications and military/aerospace customers worldwide. Under the partnership, the companies will provide integrated solutions based on RadiSys’ Promentum ATCA chassis and server blade products and Astute Networks’ edge storage blades, bundled with application-specific software. The companies will market these combined solutions in the communications and mil/aero marketplaces. GoAhead Software announced that it is shifting its business model and technology strategy from its proprietary SAFfire product to an open source software model. Simultaneous with the move to open source, GoAhead is announcing the acquisition of Avantellis from Emerson Network Power. GoAhead believes that this strategic direction will further accelerate COTS adoption in telecommunications, media, aerospace and defense, and other markets. In conjunction with the move to open source, GoAhead is formally announcing that it is joining the OpenSAF foundation. GoAhead will be contributing key components of its SAFfire middleware to OpenSAF and company President Asif Naseem will be joining the OpenSAF foundation as a board member. Advantech announced the introduction of its MIC-5701E ATCA DSP blade (previously codenamed Tomcat) based on Texas Instruments'(TI’s) TMS320TCI6486 6-core DSP.The blade is the first in a series of Advantech DSP products which reach exceptional levels of performance density for high-capacity infrastructure applications. The blade is designed for use in network elements such as high density media servers or media gateways in 3G and 4G LTE applications. New growth areas being addressed with the blade include video conferencing, telepresence and IPTV streaming. For further information, visit www.advantech.com/NC. Cavium Networks unveiled the OCTEON II CN68XX/67XX processor families for borderless enterprise, mobile internet infrastructure and secure data center and cloud computing applications. The processor integrates 8 to 32 enhanced MIPS64 cores with up to 48GHz of 64 bit compute power in a single chip, combined with over 85 L3-L7 application and security acceleration engines, virtualization features, 100Gbps of connectivity, and a new Real Time Power Optimizer that dynamically adjusts power depending upon the application-level processing requirement. For more information, visit www.caviumnetworks.com/newsevents_Caviumnetworks_OCTEON-ll_CN67XX-CN68XX.html. Mercury Computer Systems announced a systems-level enhancement for solutions based on the MicroTCA standard. The new six-slot chassis is part of Mercury’s Ensemble 2000 MicroTCA Platform, a standards-based solution built around the power, functionality, and scalability of RapidIO, Ethernet, IPMI, AdvancedMC, and MicroTCA industry standards. Switches are built into the chassis backplane to support both Gigabit Ethernet (base interface) and a choice of communications fabrics including RapidIO, 10 Gigabit Ethernet, and PCI Express. The backplane also includes built-in system manager functionality. This built-in functionality means that a separate MCH module is not required, reducing costs and allowing all slots to be configured with AMCs. The new Ensemble 2000 chassis is also appropriate for a wide range of system sizes, with multi-chassis scalability built into the design. PT announced the introduction of the AMP5072 1U MicroTCA Application-Ready System. The AMP5072 is specifically designed for LTE and WiMAX equipment manufacturers, and features Serial RapidIO fabric with System Timing Module for wireless base station synchronization. These systems integrate all the hardware components, Operating System, and software protocols, and are ideal for wireless application development. Tail-f Systems announced new capabilities for its ConfD software. These new features will help developers build applications that run faster, reduce development time, and further extend carrier-grade capabilities to their products. Support for Multicore allows ConfD to use multiple cores or CPUs to distribute processing and maximize performance. With this announcement, ConfD supports in-service upgrades, allowing changes to the data model to be made without restarting the ConfD application. Polaris Networks released the PNCT-ATCA-300 tester. The tester has an interactive Windows based GUI that allows selection and performance of a range of Interactive and Non-Interactive tests from a list of pre-scripted tests. The PNCT-ATCA-300 allows for testing of ATCA building blocks, such as Shelf Manager, FRUs, carrier boards, mezzanine cards for compliance with the system management requirements in PICMG 3.0 (AdvancedTCA) Rev 3.0. The tester also helps to ensure that ATCA systems meet the interoperability and certification requirements of CP-TA. Southco has introduced a Flush-Style AdvancedMC Module Handle. The handle delivers enhanced efficiency by minimizing protrusion on the module faceplate and provides a convenient module removal solution for telecom service providers, telecom equipment manufacturers, and other contract OEMs. The handle adds styling and ergonomic performance to the hot-swap protection mandated by the PICMG AMC.0 R2.0 standards and the MicroTCA standard (MTCA.0) for modular systems. For more information, visit www.southco.com/ATCA. Oclaro announced it has made a $7.5 million strategic investment in ClariPhy Communications, a privately-held fabless semiconductor company focused on digital signal processing (DSP) and mixed-signal integrated circuits (ICs) for high-speed next-generation networks. In addition, ClariPhy and Oclaro have signed a Co-Marketing and Development Agreement leveraging ClariPhy's 40nm, single-chip products with Oclaro's optical technology. The alliance with ClariPhy is part of Oclaro's strategy to build upon its position in 40 Gigabits per second ("Gb/s") regional and metro networks and expand into the 100 Gb/s Coherent long-haul and ultra-long-haul markets. 3.Navigating the Technology Minefield, from Lance Leventhal, Technology EditorNeed Fiber in Your Cabling Diet? As communications frequencies keep rising, copper connections become more problematic. They simply don’t work well in the Gigabit range, even the newer and much more expensive variants. Despite copper’s clear advantages of ease of use and wide familiarity, the future is surely with fiber optics. One concern most engineers have with fiber optics is the difficulty of working with it. There is no question that it’s harder to design, install, and maintain than traditional copper. However, it has been around a while, and training for new users is widely available. For example, a company with the clever name of The Light Brigade has been training people to use fiber for over 20 years and has trained over 35,000 students. They offer a variety of courses, ranging from basic to highly advanced in a variety of forms. You can take public offerings at several locations, use computer-based training, watch their DVDs, or bring customized courses in house. They offer many certifications as well, and the DVDs are available from IEEE. For more information, see www.lightbrigade.com. Light Brigade also offers an online catalog of fiber optic products and tools, many of which they use in their courses. These are serious folks. Their public offerings include such awesome locations as Spartanburg, South Carolina, Minneapolis in January, and Redding, California. Surely the most exacting bean counter could not question trips to such delightful places as frivolous boondoggles. It’s Too Darn Wide! “Check out the size of that girl's backside, Are you publishing information to the Web? Remember that nowadays many people will be viewing it on a mobile device with a small screen, such as an iPhone or a BlackBerry. How can you be sure they will see what they need without endless scrolling (or trying to peer under the edge)? One way is by having separate layouts for different devices. You can do this easily with SiteSpinner Pro from Virtual Mechanics. It allows you to design interactive websites for standard desktops and laptops, as well as ones people can view on smartphones, PDAs, and other mobile devices. You can preview your pages as you build them and see what they’ll look like on various devices and resolutions. SiteSpinner Pro even has a Combined Layout function that optimizes pages automatically for all devices. It also has all the standard features you would expect and various levels of support, plus community forums, lists of frequently asked questions, and a newsletter. And everything is priced very reasonably. Thanks to Peter White of Virtual Mechanics for explaining his products at the recent CES. For more information, see www.sitespinnerpro.com. Recovering Stolen Laptops “… chance favors only the prepared mind.” – Louis Pasteur Having one’s laptop, netbook, or notebook stolen causes far more damage than just the cost of the device. Not only do you struggle to work without your constant companion, but you also lose valuable data, including documents, spreadsheets, contact information, databases, pictures, and videos. Besides, how can you survive these days without immediate access to Google, Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, YouTube, Wikipedia, and other necessities? If even the thought of losing your laptop makes you quiver, you should consider Absolute Software’s Computrace LoJack for Laptops. It depends on a small software client embedded into your computer’s BIOS, or you can use the software-only version. The agent talks to the Absolute Monitoring Center daily (no, I have no idea what they say!). If you report your computer stolen, the communication period decreases to 15 minutes. So the Monitoring Center can track what is happening to your computer and where it is. You can even remotely delete private data (I mean financial or identity information, not what you’re thinking of now – this is a family newsletter, after all). And you can get a service guarantee. You’ve surely heard of LoJack for your car, so why not for your laptop? Stolen laptops aren’t uncommon – according to The Ponemon Institute, “A laptop goes missing every 50 seconds at U.S. airports.” I would like to thank Bill Hunka of Absolute Software for explaining the Computrace LoJack concept at a recent CES. For more information, see www.absolute.com. Don’t Leave Home Without It! “…elephants never forget…” – Saki If you aren’t an elephant (or don’t travel with one) and you sometimes forget things, Dane-Elec’s myDitto USB key is for you. Suppose you’ve left your PowerPoint in your office or at home, or the version you have isn’t the latest one. Suppose a contract, chart, or document is on your desktop, but not with you. What to do? If you have myDitto, just plug it into your laptop (or any other computer), follow the simple directions, and download what you need. It’s fast, easy, and inexpensive. You can use the same approach to back up files, transfer data among PCs, laptops, PDAs, and smartphones, and even provide a virtual network at home or in a small business. And all you carry around is a tiny flash disk, which is a lot more convenient than trying to squeeze an elephant into an airplane’s overhead compartment! Thanks to Jon Christeson of Dane-Elec for demonstrating myDitto at the recent CES. For more information, see www.my-ditto.com. 4. Organization UpdatesArticles AXIe offers State-of-the-Art Modular Test and Measurement Platforms Modular test and measurement platforms have many advantages, including flexibility, lower size and weight, less cabling and interconnections, and often enhanced timing and synchronization. For complex systems including multi-channel applications, they offer much lower prices and lower total cost of ownership than stand-alone “box” instrumentation. The range of products and performance in modular instruments is truly amazing, from microwave frequencies to terabytes of storage to almost limitless channels of signal switching and data acquisition, all supported by powerful software and computing. A key benefit is the ability to combine signal switching and switch matrix functionality along with test and measurement instrumentation in a single chassis. See the full article. AdvancedTCA Passes Muster with the Military The US military, one of the world’s largest electronics and communications markets, is currently undergoing major change. In the past, military acquisition called for purpose-built equipment designed by a single contractor for a specific application at the lowest possible cost. Unfortunately, the resulting proprietary systems often could not interoperate or exchange data easily. Designing them from scratch also took a long time and often resulted in deployments that were far behind commercial equivalents technologically. This lag as well as the high cost of maintenance and upgrading has prompted the U.S. military to often require designs based on Commercial Off-the-Shelf (COTS) products and technologies. See the full article. Celebrating 10 Years of Success with RapidIO The RapidIO® Trade Association is celebrating its tenth year. Members have driven the architecture specifications and actively participated in specification and market development. The RapidIO switched interconnect technology has become a leading choice for embedded designers looking for reliability and a strong ecosystem. See the full article. More Companies Recognize the Value of Standards-Based Solutions Commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) high-availability software has experienced significant development and growth recently. Industries such as telecommunications, military, and aerospace are increasingly recognizing the benefits of implementing standards-based solutions. As companies look for new, innovative ways to differentiate products, reduce time-to-market, and improve their bottom lines, they are turning to standards-based software for their service availability needs. The SA Forum has observed trend-setting changes recently. In February, Ericsson became the first major equipment manufacturer to announce deployment of OpenSAF technology, which incorporates SA Forum specifications in carrier networks. Weeks later, SA Forum member company GoAhead Software announced its shift to an open source business model with the acquisition of the Avantellis® product line from Emerson Network Power. Responding to market developments and the rapid growth and adoption of OpenSAF technology in commercial deployments, GoAhead is now incorporating OpenSAF in its standards-based software solutions. See the full article. How Cloud Computing Can Increase Telecom Business SCOPE Alliance hosted its “Cloud Computing in Telecom” member workshop May 5-6 at the IEEE Operations Center in Piscataway, New Jersey. The workshop, featuring twelve presentations and two panel discussions, attracted many delegates from SCOPE member companies, as well as participants who joined remotely. Presenters from both SCOPE member companies and guest companies offered industry expert perspectives on the emergence of the network cloud. They examined the usefulness of virtualization in cloud computing, cloud computing in security, and more, with the goal of helping service providers increase their business. The strategies discussed ranged from offering SaaS to developing a network that utilizes the cloud to improve content and services at lower cost. See the full article. What's New in OpenSAF The biggest news is the imminent distribution of Release 4.0, planned for June 2010. OpenSAF is an open source community focused on high availability (HA) middleware consistent with Service Availability™ (SA) Forum specifications. In the open source tradition, OpenSAF Release 4.0 is the product of many person-years of collaborative effort by community members. It will be freely available to anyone under the LGPLv2.1, and anyone may contribute to the code base. See the full article. Announcements NetLogic Microsystems announced the launch of the eNsemble Multi-Core Alliance to drive best-in-class innovations in multi-core parallel processing platforms and software development for next-generation enterprise, telecom and data center networks. Supported currently by a broad base of over 20 hardware and software providers, the eNsemble Multi-Core Alliance will serve as the foundation upon which original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) can more effectively and more efficiently develop high-performance networking equipment using industry-leading multi-core processors. AdvancedTCA Newsletter
5. FeaturesMeeting the Growing Demands for Memory in Multicore Applications Most current AdvancedTCA CPU boards have multicore processors with large amounts of memory. Large memory banks are essential to avoid bus conflicts in the multicore era and to support virtualization of applications and operating systems. Virtualization plays a key role in supporting multiple operating systems, providing security, and enabling many applications to run simultaneously. The combination of multicores with virtualization improves utilization and efficiency, but it also increases overall power consumption. In fact, memory has become the largest consumer of energy, particularly as manufacturers have made processors more energy-efficient. See the full article. Using Mixed Signal FPGAs for xTCA Hardware Platform Management The hardware platform management layer of the PICMG, AdvancedTCA, MicroTCA, and AdvancedMC frameworks (collectively, xTCA) has been a key factor in their widespread adoption in communications and other applications. This mandatory layer does “close to hardware” management: tracking the thermal, power, and interconnect aspects of boards, modules, and shelves (or chassis), among other functions. A key aspect is the local management controllers required in each board and module. See the full article. Developing Flexible Integrated Applications Using AdvancedTCA Historically, Network Equipment Providers (NEPs) have developed proprietary hardware and software to achieve high levels of I/O capacity and high service levels. Standard off-the-shelf products simply could not meet carrier requirements. However, proprietary platforms are expensive and time-consuming to maintain. Meanwhile, the explosion in network traffic as a result of 3G and now 4G/LTE being used for web browsing and IPTV means that network operators are constantly demanding more capacity at lower prices. See the full article. Enhancing Communications Testing with a Channel Simulator RF communication systems are subject to many variables due to the media in which they transmit. When the systems are moving, the number of variables increases still more. Communication systems that may work fine when the transmitter and receiver are stationary can encounter problems when exposed to the RF signal impairments that result from motion. See the full article. Interview with Undersecretary of the Navy Robert Work 1. What do you see as the major issues in the procurement of high-end communications, control, and computing defense systems today? The two most significant issues are cost and the rate of change in technology. For reasons such as platform deployment schedules and availability, as well as the time to procure new systems, our communications, control, and computing systems are often dated before they are even completely installed throughout the fleet. This combined with costs - procurement, installation, and overall lifecycle costs - are the major issues we face in procuring systems. See the full interview. 6. UNH-IOL News and Interoperability EventsThe University of New Hampshire InterOperability Laboratory (UNH-IOL) can now test backplane Ethernet using an FPGA-based 10GBASE-KR test tool. UNH-IOL reports the following events: June 14, 2010 – June 18, 2010 June 21, 2010 – June 25, 2010 July 19, 2010 – July 25, 2010 September 29, 2010 – October 1, 2010 There will also be a plugfest on September 27-28, 2010 to allow implementers of IEEE 1588 and related protocols a chance to test interoperability. We thank Communications Coordinator Jason Walls for providing this update. He can be reached at (603)862-5051 or jwalls@iol.unh.edu. 7. Financial NewsFinancial Statements Cisco Third Quarter Cavium Networks First Quarter PT First Quarter 8. Newsletter Advertising Rates
Contact: Kat Pate, kat@atcanewsletter.com 9. Newsletter ArchiveBack issues of this Newsletter are archived in PDF format. See: www.atcanewsletter.com, then click on Archived Newsletters, then click on desired issue.
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