AdvancedTCA Newsletter |
Vol. 6, No. 6 Dec 2010 - Jan 2011 Newsletter circulation: 13.978 |
| www.atcanewsletter.com | |
In This Issue
The program schedule is substantially finalized, and online registration is open for the Second Annual Ethernet Technology Summit. The Summit will be held at the Santa Clara Marriott Hotel in Santa Clara, California from February 23 to 24, and will focus on the use of Ethernet throughout the networking space. This includes the emergence of 10-Gigabit Ethernet as a key LAN technology on the desktop and in data centers. It will also cover the ongoing standardization effort for 40-Gigabit and 100-Gigabit Ethernet, and the use of Ethernet as a carrier backbone and transport method, as well as in wireless, industrial, embedded, and storage applications. On the day prior to the Summit (February 22), there will be two all-day workshops. One workshop will be dedicated to High-Speed Signaling (25 Gbps and above), and the other to Terabit Ethernet. For the complete schedule, visit www.ethernetsummit.com/English/Conference/Program.html. Online registration will be available through February 16. Table of Contents
2. Industry NewsMarket Research Telecommunications industry market research firm Infonetics Research (http://twitter.com/infonetics) released its updated Service Provider Outsourcing to Vendors report. The report tracks the revenue vendors derive from the services they offer to their service provider clients, which include mobile and fixed network planning and design, building, maintenance, operations, application service delivery, service provisioning and activation, and billing. The report also tracks worldwide and regional market size, market share, and forecasts through 2014. Market share for Alcatel-Lucent, Ciena, Cisco, Ericsson, Fujitsu, Hitachi, HP, Huawei, IBM, Juniper Networks, Microsoft, Motorola, NEC, Nokia Siemens Networks, Nortel, Tellabs, UTStarcom, ZTE, and others is also provided. Some of the highlights of the report are:
Stéphane Téral, Infonetics Research's principal analyst for mobile and FMC infrastructure notes, "Fierce competition among telecom service providers around the world is driving them to increase operating expenses, and that in turn is forcing service providers to outsource more of their network tasks, because outsourcing is one of the last remaining ways to cut operations expenses. With major outsourcing deals looming, Ericsson, Nokia Siemens Networks, Alcatel-Lucent, and Huawei may end up running three-quarters of the networks on this planet.”
Hardware and Software Emerson Network Power announced it has joined the EDGE Innovation Network. Sponsored by General Dynamics C4 Systems, the EDGE is a collaborative, open-environment initiative enabling industry and academia, with government input, to work together to enhance the delivery cycle of new technologies and innovative capabilities to warfighters and first responders. Stephen Dow, president of the Embedded Computing business of Emerson Network Power, said: "The EDGE network will give us outstanding insight into the needs of military, aerospace and government users of our COTS embedded computing technologies, enabling us to build better network-centric solutions and improve the safety and tactical advantage of warfighters, first responders and others in the field." More information on the EDGE Innovation Network can be found online at www.edge-innovation.com. SANBlaze Technology announced the SB-ATCA2000, its next generation storage services blade built with Intel's Jasper Forest Nehalem-based embedded processor. In addition to built-in support for both 10Gb iSCSI and NAS protocols, it becomes the industry's first blade to add offloaded FCoE target support. With its powerful CPU complex, and 16 lane Gen2 PCI Express (PCIe) bus, the ATCA2000 combines dual 10Gb network ports with up to ten hot-swappable disks in a single ATCA slot. The blade and available RTM can support up to 10 SATA or SSD drives or 6 SAS drives. For more information, visit www.sanblaze.com. Diversified Technology (DTI) announced its AdvancedTCA blade as VMware Ready Certified, with ESX 4.1 and ESXi 4.1 for Virtualization. As a VMware Technology Alliance Partner (TAP), DTI can provide customers with jointly supported hardware solutions. The program creates a broad ecosystem of devices that are certified to run with the VMware ESX product line and VDI, making available more choices for DTI's customers and new platforms. “With the increased demand for Virtualization in the data center, we can provide a VMware compatible solution for the embedded server space based on the ATCA specification. DTI certified the ATC6239 with the latest version of VMware’s ESX and ESXi server hypervisors which allows our customers to leverage VMware’s virtualization software products and shorten time to market,” said Patrick Welzien, Senior Software Engineering Manager for Diversified Technology. Advantech announced two new products based on the latest Intel Core i7 processors, the MIC-5603 AdvancedMC and the MIC-3395 6U CompactPCI single board computer. The MIC-5603 AMC with the Intel Core i7 processor targets a broad range of applications where network performance, graphics or vector processing, and compute intensive tasks are required. The MIC-3395 6U CompactPCI SBC follows on the success of the MIC-3392 blade using low power mobile processor technology and offers an upgrade path with higher levels of performance and richer features. The board fits in a single 4HP slot and expands memory capacity to up to 4GB on board DDR3 with ECC support and one SO-UDIMM module for up to a further 8GB. Further details are available here. NetLogic Microsystems announced the introduction of the NLP3342, the industry’s first dual-mode quad-port 10GBase-KR and 40GBase-KR4 backplane PHY with Energy Efficient Ethernet (EEE). Designed in the advanced 40nm CMOS process, this new NLP3342 device is targeted at transmission of 10Gbps and 40Gbps signals over standard backplanes, and is compliant with the IEEE 802.3az Energy Efficient Ethernet standard to offer significantly lower power consumption. The NLP3342 PHY is ideally suited for next-generation data centers and telecommunications equipment that are capable of scaling power consumption proportionally to the throughput performance of the network. Pinnacle Data Systems announced an upgrade to its military-proven ATCA-F1 Compute Blade. Incorporating dual, six core AMD Istanbul processors delivers 12 cores, providing a performance boost versus the Shanghai (8 cores) or Santa Rosa (4 cores) configurations. In addition, a new 32 GB memory option brings enhanced virtualization performance. "This new F1 option delivers nearly three-times the processing power of our original dual-core based product, giving telecom, aerospace, and military OEMs and integrators the ability to deploy configurable, scalable, high-reliability solutions based on AMD's Opteron processor technologies," said John D. Bair, President and CEO of PDSi. Pinnacle can also provide customization, ruggedization, turnkey integration and support of ATCA systems, as well as extended warranty and repair services. For more details, view the product datasheet at www.pinnacle.com/products2/advancedtca/. Continuous Computing announced that Allot Communications is using its packet processing and switch technology to power the Allot Service Gateway Sigma (SG-Sigma) platform. The Allot SG-Sigma is a carrier-grade platform with 60Gbps of throughput. It integrates network intelligence, policy control and revenue-generating services in a single solution for Tier 1 and Tier 2 broadband carriers and Internet Service Providers. Continuous Computing’s FlexPacket ATCA-PP50 packet processing blade and FlexCore ACTA-FM40 switch are part of the carrier-grade platform underpinning the performance of the Allot SG-Sigma. The PP50 is a high density, highly efficient processing blade that couples with the FM40’s advanced switch-based load balancing capabilities to form a unique combination of packet processing potency. Anritsu introduced the first measurement suite for handheld analyzers that measures the RF, modulation, and Over-the-Air (OTA) parameters of TD-LTE eNodeB radio transmitters. Designed for use with Anritsu's MT822xB BTS Master and MS272xC Spectrum Master families, the measurement suite provides carriers, network equipment manufacturers, third-party contractors, and installers involved in the deployment of LTE networks with a comprehensive handheld test instrument to test, verify, and report on base station transmitter quality and coverage. To learn more, visit www.anritsu.com. Vicor Corporation introduced the PFM VI BRICK module, an isolated AC-DC converter with Power Factor Correction (PFC). With its Adaptive Cell architecture enabling consistently high efficiency over worldwide AC mains, the PFM VI BRICK delivers 330W at 48V (SELV) in a 9.5 mm-thin profile. Unlike low frequency AC-DC front ends using a PFC boost stage and a DC-DC down converter, the PFM VI BRICK module provides isolation, voltage transformation and PFC regulation in a single stage using advanced, high-frequency soft switching technology. For datasheets, technical documentation, and to order samples of the PF175B480C033FP-00 online, visit www.vicorpower.com. 3. Navigating the Technology Minefield, from Lance Leventhal, Technology EditorOperating in the Clouds “There's a dreary dark cloud hanging o'er me, Everyone is looking at cloud computing today as a way to contain costs, simplify operations, and reduce capital expenditures. However, working in the cloud raises many questions such as migrating existing applications, supporting new applications, achieving reliable operations, providing security, achieving scalability, and handling configuration, deployment, and management. In fact, when you think about it, it sounds like you need a new operating system to provide all this functionality. Well, guess what, such a thing exists – it’s called Nimbula. The private cloud OS company was formed recently by the developers who created Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud – and has backing from Diane Greene, the founder and former CEO of VMware who recently joined the board. Can’t ask for much better credentials than that! What can Nimbula do for you? Nimbula Director runs on your infrastructure and can manage both on- and off-premise resources. It provides failover mechanisms, authorization, multi-tenancy, federation, placement, integration with existing services, an API, dynamic storage allocation, integrated system metrics and reporting, and support for hypervisors. It handles dynamic technologies and needs, provides full policy-based security, and collects monitoring information. It will simplify working in the clouds for application developers and system managers alike. For more information, see www.nimbula.com. The author would like to thank Amber Rowland of Nimbula for providing information about the company. Chattanooga Choo-Choo Reaches 1 Gigabit “Pardon me boy, is that the Chattanooga Choo-choo, track twenty-nine? Boy you can gimme a shine. I can afford to board the Chattanooga Choo-choo. I’ve got my fare and just a trifle to spare.” – “Chattanooga Choo-Choo”, Jack Gordon and Harry Warren, 1941 You may have thought of Chattanooga, Tennessee as just a town with a funny-sounding name, but it recently became the most advanced broadband city in America. Alcatel-Lucent and EPB Fiber Optics (a municipally owned network) announced the only 1 Gigabit broadband service in the US for residential and business customers citywide. Sure, Chattanooga has only 170,000 people (518,000 in the metropolitan area), but even a few thousand of those folks taking advantage of 1 Gigabit service could bring most networks to their knees. And if they all started downloading videos of old Glenn Miller or Tex Beneke concerts (their bands made “Chattanooga Choo-Choo” famous in the 1940s) at once, you’d really need a lot of bandwidth. Just imagine how much a network would need if all of New York, Los Angeles, or Chicago had 1 Gigabit service! There could be a huge demand for highly expandable AdvancedTCA gear! Besides, we all know that higher-speed service leads to more usage and the inevitable demands for even faster data rates. After all, downloading a big 5 GB movie would still take 40 seconds at 1 Gigabit (and who wants to wait that long?). If anyone would like to hold a meeting on Gigabit Broadband Service and Its Implications, send me an email at lance@atcanewsletter.com. We’d hold it at the Chattanooga Choo-Choo Hotel, where you can even have a beautifully restored Victorian train car as your room. With, of course, high-speed Internet service (which is surely more than either Queen Victoria or the railroad tycoons ever got)! Connecting a This to a That There are always new SoCs or processors around one would like to use and new devices one would like to connect to them. It sounds quite simple in theory, but the practice is much harder. Diagrams generally show a nice-looking box marked “Driver” which provides the required software functionality. However, writing drivers turns out to be a complex business involving detailed understanding of:
One must make them talk to each other, much as if one were trying to do a task with a team of people speaking different languages and having different cultural backgrounds. Since the job is mostly a rote one, surely one can automate it. And, in fact, there are tools to do just that. For example, Vayavya Labs’ Device Driver Generator (DDGen) captures device and software specifications formally. It then analyzes them, satisfies the operating system’s constraints, and generates C device driver code. While the result may not beat what a hot-shot embedded software programmer could write, it will do the job – and takes a lot less time and effort. DDGen can handles a variety of embedded operating systems, processors (including X86 and ARM), and interfaces (including PCIe, USB, and Ethernet). For more information, see www.vayavyalabs.com. The author would like to thank Vayavya Labs CEO R.K. Patil for explaining the concept to him at a recent ARM Developers’ event. Concurrency Bugs are Tough to Find “How can you think and hit at the same time?” – Yogi Berra Software bugs are often difficult to find, but ones due to concurrency issues are particularly loathsome. The latest multicore and multithreading systems are generally executing many things at a particular point in time. So errors may occur only when tasks execute in a particular order or interact in a particular way. Such conditions are generally difficult to spot, much less test, with the tools one usually has at one’s disposal. They show up as sporadic problems that one can neither trace nor reproduce. New technology can help. For example, Corensic has a software quality tool cleverly called Jinx. Among its features are:
Jinx works on Linux, Windows, and most development platforms. For more information about it, see www.corensic.com. Thanks to Dr. Mark Oskin, CTO of Corensic, for explaining the concept at a recent Intel Developers Forum. 4. Organization UpdatesAXIe Product Development for AdvancedTCA Vendors Now that the AXIe (AdvancedTCA Extensions for Instrumentation) specification has been published and the first products have appeared, there is growing interest in developing AXIe products. Both Test Evolution and Agilent Technologies have reported brisk early sales of development environments. AdvancedTCA vendors have an advantage for quick time to market, since AXIe is highly leveraged from the AdvancedTCA specifications. However, identifying the best way forward for developing AXIe products varies with product category. This article gives a quick review of product opportunities and development choices. Developers must note that AXIe actually consists of two independent specifications: AXIe 1.0 for general purpose instrumentation defines a backplane topology for Zones 1 and 2, and AXIe 3.1 defines a Zone 3 interface and backplane oriented to semiconductor test. AXIe 1.0 systems may exist by themselves (no Zone 3), or have the AXIe 3.1 Zone 3 backplane. AXIe 3.1, as a Zone 3 definition, may co-exist with an AXIe 1.0 Zone 1+2 backplane, or any standard AdvancedTCA Zones 1 and 2 topology. See the full article. SA Forum Educates Viewers about the Hardware Platform Interface (HPI) In 2011, the SA Forum will continue educating people on the benefits of service availability and why it is becoming increasingly relevant and important in our daily lives. The Application Webcast Series has educated viewers on how to implement SA Forum specifications for carrier-grade and mission-critical applications and systems. We will continue providing viewers with resources to help them understand the specifications and their use in real world examples. New Webcast: Introduction to SA Forum Hardware Platform Interface The latest installment in our well-received Application Webcast Series, “An Introduction to Hardware Platform Interface (HPI)” discusses the key elements and concepts of HPI. It also helps those needing an open, standards-based, multi-platform or proven hardware management interface, or system users requiring this capability. Service availability middleware uses the HPI to access hardware management and monitoring capabilities, so packages can be portable. Applications program also often use the HPI directly. To watch this latest webcast or view the rest of the Application Series, please visit the Application Webcast Series page on the SA Forum website. To learn more about this topic, visit the SA Forum’s Hardware Platform Interface page. Mark Overgaard is a member of the Service Availability Forum. He is also Founder and Chief Technical Officer at Pigeon Point Systems. You can reach him at mark@pigeonpoint.com. SCOPE Alliance Welcomes 2011 Officers, Begins May Workshop Planning SCOPE Alliance kicked off the New Year at a recent officers meeting during which it elected new officers, advanced plans to host the third in a series of SCOPE member workshops, and discussed a recently posted HPC in the Cloud. SCOPE contributed an article and upcoming whitepaper. 2011 SCOPE Board Officers
Congratulations to our new officers! SCOPE Member Workshop SCOPE officers agreed to host the next member workshop on May 4-5. It will focus on hardware technology advances in Carrier Grade Base Platforms (CGBPs) and will feature SCOPE member and guest speakers. SCOPE will soon issue a call for presentations. Information about registration and presentations, as well as additional workshop details will be available on the SCOPE website at www.scope-alliance.org. See the full article. RapidIO Generation 2 - Part II The embedded industry looks to RapidIO® to meet the needs of mobile users and increase quality of service. The Gen2 specification provides more usable bits per milliwatt while remaining backward compatible with Gen1. This is done not just by increasing raw bandwidth, but also by providing flow control facilities to manage short- and medium-term congestion and to avoid long-term congestion. Physical Layer Enhancements The physical layer now supports 5.0 Gbaud and 6.25 Gbaud lane rates, allowing a 4x RapidIO port to have up to 20 Gbps bandwidth. The link width options now include 2x, 8x, and 16x. With five lane speeds and five lane widths, system designers can tailor a RapidIO port’s raw bandwidth to anything between 1 and 80 Gbps. See the full article. The Best of CP-TA: 2010 Highlights What better time than the beginning of a new year to discuss highlights from last year? Here are a few 2010 highlights:
OpenSAF Conference 2011: Key Event for the High-Availability (HA) Middleware Community The OpenSAF Foundation is kicking planning into high gear for the 2011 OpenSAF Conference, a technical event for developers, users, engineering managers, and press involved in the open source HA middleware community. OpenSAF is an organization established by leading communications and computing companies, including Ericsson, GoAhead Software, HP, and Wind River. The project strives to encourage development of HA middleware compliant with the Service Availability Forum specifications. This will be the conference’s fourth year, and OpenSAF hopes to build on momentum and success from its 2008, 2009, and 2010 events. This year’s conference will be held May 17-18, 2011, in Cambridge, MA at MIT. It will feature many new sessions and discussions led by well-known technologists, experts, and architects in the HA ecosystem. See the full article. AdvancedTCA Newsletter
5. Feature ArticlesAchieving High-Density Media Servers in AdvancedTCA High density media processing, once considered achievable only on specialized digital signal processing (DSP) hardware, is now frequently being deployed via off-the-shelf, general purpose processors. AdvancedTCA is an excellent platform for achieving the associated cost benefits, as it provides the required performance in a flexible, modular form. In the past, medium and high density media processing had to be done on DSPs—general purpose processors simply could not handle the job. The performance advantage was so great that it outweighed the added cost, increased complexity of programming, and extended learning curve. However, the disadvantages of DSPs remain significant. See the full article. Developing High-Speed LTE Applications Next generation networks based on LTE offer download speeds up to 100 Mbps per subscriber. Such high rates put increased stress on processor power for the radio interface and for I/O within the baseband processing system. Meanwhile, data is becoming the main traffic type, session lengths are increasing, and operators are under pressure to reduce costs. Flexibility is a key here. Macro basestations will provide wide area coverage, but pico cells will fill in areas of poor coverage or high user density. Even as LTE is being rolled out today, operators want equipment which can be upgraded to LTE-Advanced inexpensively. See the full article. Testing Networked Application Performance Flight simulators have long been a key tool in training pilots. A good simulator offers realistic landing patterns, actual weather conditions, typical traffic – you can even hear a nearby goose honk before…uh, it gets cooked in the engine (smell those burning feathers)! Computer application testers can use a similar approach to evaluate the behavior of programs in an increasingly complex and varied network environment. Testing application performance is important. No one wants the customer to be the first to find out that performance isn’t anything like he or she expected…or you promised. However, now that most applications work over a network, they must be tested in a network environment. Networks are subject to conditions, such as restricted bandwidths, latency and packet loss, that can severely impact application performance. Therefore, testers must include these factors in their test regime so that they can see how the application copes with them. See the full article. Building an LTE Security Appliance in AdvancedTCA Driven by the exploding usage of mobile broadband, mobile operators are currently transitioning to Long Term Evolution (LTE) networks. LTE is an all-IP architecture that uses the same communications technology across the entire network. It offers several advantages over current 2G/3G networks and will increase broadband capacity and capabilities, supporting up to 10 times higher data rates while enabling many new mobile applications. However, LTE also introduces inherent security threats, such as:
AdvancedTCA User Interview with Michael Xie, Founder and CTO at Fortinet Fortinet develops network security appliances. 1. Why did you choose AdvancedTCA? We selected AdvancedTCA in 2006 when our business started to incorporate telecommunications providers. We found that it provided a carrier-grade chassis solution that delivered enough horsepower to support our network security platform. We could have taken a proprietary approach, but found that the standards incorporated into AdvancedTCA enabled us to quickly secure standard parts from vendors and gave us access to pertinent research papers and test results. In addition, AdvancedTCA made it relatively easy for us to find suitable partners. In short, we found that AdvancedTCA greatly reduced our products’ time to market and reduced the number of errors we would have made had we chosen a proprietary approach. 2. What platform were you using previously and why did you decide to change? We didn’t use anything prior to AdvancedTCA. We experimented with a blade system, but ultimately didn’t adopt it. 6. UNH-IOL Interoperability News and EventsThe University of New Hampshire InterOperability Laboratory (UNH-IOL) reports the following events: IPv6 Interoperability Event February 14 – 18, 2011. Sponsored by CableLabs. 13th GPON Plugfest February 28 – March 4, 2011. This event allows vendors to test interoperability. Participants must be members of either Full Service Access Network (FSAN) or the Broadband Forum. For registration information and more details, please visit the event page. For other information about the consortium, equipment, and test suites, please contact Jason Walls. 7. Financial NewsPigeon Point Systems Declares its Independence PT Implements an Expense Reduction Program Mentor Graphics Acquires Assets of CodeSourcery Financial Statements Alcatel-Lucent Third Quarter 2010 Netlogic Microsystems Third Quarter 2010 Cavium Networks Third Quarter 2010 8. ClassifiedsBogatin Enterprises Course Offering TVD: Transparent Via Design, offered Feb 25, 2011, Santa Clara, CA Discontinuities pose the fundamental limit to channel performance especially above 6 Gbps. Learn design techniques to make them nearly transparent and analysis techniques to evaluate their real impact. The design methods introduced in class apply to vias, DC blocking capacitors and many other structures. Bring your laptop to participate in the labs and take the software and project examples back with you to address your own design problems. Seating is limited, so sign up early to assure your seat. 9. Newsletter Advertising Rates
10. 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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