networkZONE Products for the week of January 31, 2005
Agere Says…
Agere's Double-Edged Software Strategy For Its Network
Processor Can Slash Telecom Manufacturers' Development Costs
Companies utilizing new Agere software and service from HCL
Technologies can shave up to two years off equipment development cycle
Agere Systems has announced a double play of software and service initiatives
involving its network processor chips. The company is launching a new software
package and unveiling a service agreement with HCL Technologies to help
enable telecom equipment manufacturers to deliver their products to market
one-to-two years faster and save millions of dollars in product development
costs.
As a result, manufacturers of digital subscriber line access multiplexers (DSLAMs), third-generation (3G) wireless base stations, and multi-service access nodes (MSANs) can spend much more time developing revenue-generating, customized features of their products.
The first play is Agere's unveiling of the first of a series of the company's new software offering that runs on its network processors, such as the PayloadPlus APP550, targeted at a broad range of multiservice networking applications. Equipment manufacturers can quickly and easily use Agere's new, simplified Functional Programming Interface (FPI) software platform. By doing so, they avoid spending large amounts of time and money developing themselves several hundred thousand lines of software code they otherwise would have to using other company's network processor solutions. Agere's FPI software features a comprehensive suite of protocols and services for target applications. In addition, the software facilitates quick addition of revenue-generating, differentiating features with relatively small, localized changes in code.
Agere's second play consists of an agreement with India-based HCL Technologies, Ltd. (HCLT), a leader in providing cost-effective software and system integration services to the telecom industry. Through this agreement, dedicated teams from HCL are working closely with Agere on the FPI software and provide customization and system integration services to Agere's customers. This collaboration allows equipment manufacturers to spend much more time creating differentiating, higher revenue-generating equipment features in their products.
HCL has a sizable development team of engineers dedicated to work with Agere's team developing and validating FPI software for Agere's network processors. The HCL team will also provide complementary customization and system integration services through zero-learning-curve resources to augment development teams of equipment manufacturers using Agere network processors and software.
"Excelling in software ease of modification, simplicity, flexibility, as well as delivering outstanding network processor hardware performance, has never been more crucial to thrive in the network processor market," said Allen Nogee, analyst with Arizona-based In-Stat. "By offering tangible benefits to its customers via this HCL agreement, and by releasing its own new software, Agere not only saves development costs for equipment makers, but also opens many new revenue streams for equipment makers."
Using the Agere/HCL offering, manufacturers only have to insert the conceptual equivalent of one or two pieces of an entire "Lego" toy set to make the system work. Conversely, using other network processors and software they have to re-configure or rebuild almost all the Lego pieces which could number in the hundreds. Furthermore, with the simplicity of Agere PayloadPlus programming model, manufacturers only have to write or modify approximately one-thirtieth the lines of software code rather than other companies' network processor software.
Software is becoming an increasingly important factor in the NP buying decision - as much as 50 percent.
"Software and services have become a major field of contention in the network processor market," said Sindhu Xirasagar, marketing manager with Agere. "These two software plays Agere is announcing today are all about making our network processor platform offerings more attractive for our customers."
"Our company sees tremendous potential in the Agere offerings and
see this collaboration as another big step in offering meaningful products
and services to Agere's customers," said G.H. Rao, vice president of
HCL's Embedded Software Development Center.
analogZONE Says . . .
As one of the survivors in the once-crowded network processor field, Agere is working hard to adapt to the new realities of the market. Their new software strategy, which should greatly ease development time and costs, indicates that they now have a marketing plan that's a match for their formidable series of networking engines. By combining a new set of tools and ready-to-run designs with a tightly-coupled development service, they've taken a lot of "friction" out of the development cycle.
Even when I reviewed their PayloadPlus 2.5 Gbit/s NP back in 2002, it was apparent that their unusual architecture was well-suited for the tough internetworking and QoS issues that have become the real bailiwick of these devices. But I also noted that they would have to provide tools to make programming the monster-chip relatively straightforward if they were to gain any market acceptance. Agere has always done a reasonably good job of reducing programming load all along by providing a solid suite of development tools and reference designs, but they also understand that they must go even further.
"Going further" for Agere has meant moving their software support "up the food chain" from supplying APIs to providing entire near-turnkey applications suites. The first part of their announcement is software that creates a device-independent app layer that sits between the silicon and the user, allowing the chip to masquerade as a DSL line card or a wireless 3G ATM-based Node B element. Future releases will enable the processor to emulate Node B's with IP backplanes and IP backhauls. And if you really feel the need to tinker, Agere provides you with the source code, allowing customers to modify and "tweak" the software to their specific requirements themselves.
And for those customers who do want to roll their own, the new extensions of the current tool set should help simplify the process. Agere claims that you will now need to write only 1/30th the amount of code required by a conventional processor to do the same task. This is in part thanks to the PayloadPlus's architecture, which has lots of hardware-enabled functions built into the silicon that execute as a single command (queue management, classification, buffer management, etc) that natively execute processes that would require many steps in a RISC processor. This alone results in simpler, easier-to-document code.
Agere's hardware advantage is now compounded by
their new Functional Programming Language (FPL), that's used to program
the classification engine and the NP (see the figure below). It' a C-based
sequential language used to handle buffer and traffic management, policing,
and PDU modification. You get a big reduction in programming load by using
their Functional Programming
Interfaces (FPIs). FPIs differ from APIs because
APIs have some device-specific commands in them while FPIs are written at
a higher level to let the programmer deal only with the application itself.
According to Agere, using these tools to construct programs in larger "chunks"
with fewer lines of code has several advantages besides the immediate labor
savings, including reduced debug and maintenance labor.
Given my experience with writing assembly code, I would at least believe a good deal of these claims these tools can cut the cost and length of a project by slashing the number of lines of code written. Hopefully, the tools and languages are closely linked enough to the silicon to avoid the "bloat" that accompanies writing applications in most high-level languages, but I didn't get a close enough look at these tools to do much more than take Agere's word for it.
And speaking of programming labor, Agere's move to partner with HCLT Industries to provide custom services seem like a big value-add for some of their customers with relatively thin engineering departments. While their processors don't enjoy the broad base of support across multiple software vendors and developers, that companies such as Freescale and TI do, Agere claims to make up for the lack of "breadth" with more "depth" by working very closely with their 3rd party partners to make them as intimate with the silicon as their own programmers.
Network processors are finally coming into their own and selling in enough volumes that at least some of the manufacturers will eventually recoup the hundreds of millions of dollars invested in their development. Of course they still have an uphill battle against competition from the growing embedded intelligence in switches and switch fabrics, and from dedicated traffic classification and management silicon, but there are emerging classes of functions that are still best handled by a programmable solution. Thanks to its unique hybrid architecture that closely couples programmable and dedicated functions, Agere's solution has a shot at being one of the winners. And the roll-out of its new software strategy should go a long way towards bettering its odds.
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