networkZONE Products for the week of April 4, 2005

Agere Systems Says…
Agere's Converged Access Solutions Team Right-Sized Network And Link-Layer Processors With Reference Designs And Tools To Accelerate Development

Agere Systems has announced a portfolio of access solutions -- featuring two new processor chips -- that will allow wireline and wireless service providers to expand their product offerings, generate more revenues, and reduce their costs in the global market battle to provide converged access services to consumers. Called TrueAdvantage, these solutions also allow the wireline and wireless access equipment industry to reduce product development costs by at least $120 million, while accelerating equipment deliveries supporting new services by up to two years.

A launching pad for producing more intelligent converged access networks and services, TrueAdvantage access solutions consist of five critical and inter-related elements: feature-rich networking chips; robust software development tools; integrated hardware development systems; and proven reference designs developed with global access equipment manufacturers, and turnkey application software. The Advanced PayloadPlus 300 (APP300) network processor chip and Link Layer Processor (LLP) chip are new networking devices that are the first of the family of TrueAdvantage solution elements to be unveiled in detail. These two chips are central drivers for fueling higher performance, lower cost converged access equipment and services.

Used in access equipment, these devices can reduce software application code size by 30 times and save up to eight staff years of engineering resources. These resulting applications can support delivery of new and improved revenue-generating services such as higher quality standard and high-definition Internet Protocol Television (IPTV); mission-critical high-speed data services; voice services transported over the Internet (Voice over Internet Protocol) and multimedia mobile services.

"The keys to unlocking the value of converged access services are multi-protocol processing and quality of service capabilities combined with faster application deployment," said Denis Regimbal, vice president with Agere's Telecom Division. "Through their proven benefits of lowering costs and improving performance, these new processors enable access equipment manufacturers, and ultimately service providers, to derive more revenues from these services and accelerate the speed at which they are delivered to customers."

Corecess, a pioneer and major provider of Internet Protocol Digital Subscriber Line Access Multiplexer (IP DSLAM) equipment, has already chosen Agere's APP300 to enable their equipment to deliver a comprehensive offering of "triple play" services: voice, data, and video.

APP300 comes with field-proven application software that allows equipment manufacturers such as Corecess to quickly create flexible, reusable application software on multiple types of equipment, dramatically minimizing the amount of software they need to develop. Agere estimates its APP300 and complementary TrueAdvantage solutions can save project leaders developing converged access equipment at least $2.5 million per project largely because they minimize the amount of software they need to write.

"Network processor software is the largest contributor to product lifetime system cost, development time, and reliability," said Jeremy Ha, CEO of Corecess. "The Agere APP300 will allow Corecess to efficiently increase the horsepower of our Internet Protocol IP DSLAM platform and to economically evolve it once it is deployed."

APP300: Setting the Benchmark for Cost Per Bit of Performance
The APP300 addresses several different carrier access applications, offering a level of processing performance typically associated with higher-end network processors while delivering significantly lower cost and power consumption. Adaptable for use in Internet Protocol (IP), Asynchronous Transfer Mode, Ethernet, Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) and multi-service (the simultaneous combination of protocols) applications, the chip supports all prevalent integrated network interfaces required for access applications and offers as much as twice the traffic processing power as competing products. This makes the chip ideal for use in equipment such as DSLAMs, multi-service access nodes (MSANs), wireless Node B/Base Transceiver Station (BTS) systems, wireless radio network controllers (RNCs), media gateways and access routers.

"Agere's APP300 series offers the best of both worlds, a high speed network processor at prices affordable for use in cost-competitive wireline and wireless access equipment," said Sanjay Iyer, senior analyst with The Linley Group, a technology research company. "Agere's APP300 devices deliver the best price/performance and power consumption/performance ratio compared with leading alternatives."

The APP300 delivers Agere's fine grained traffic processing capabilities to the access space. In wireless, where backhaul bandwidth is limited, traffic processing delivers increased link efficiency. In wireline, advanced access services such as IPTV, voice, and video conferencing are also made possible by this capability. To ensure an acceptable user experience, each of these services requires a unique combination of network attributes, such as security, latency, resiliency, packet loss, and throughput. The APP300 enables these requirements to be met, ensuring a satisfying user experience and making possible the vision of a fully connected home in which, for instance, one member is watching an HDTV program while reading email, another is on a VoIP call, and yet others are engaged in video chat sessions with their friends.

The APP300 series targets a diverse range of access applications, enabling uplink rates that range from a few hundred megabits per second (Mbits/s) up to 2 gigabits per second (Gbits/s), whereas the company's APP500 series chips are widely used in 2.5 Gbits/s to 5 Gbits/s edge applications. Because both use the same portable software, equipment manufacturers are able to leverage development efforts across their access platforms. This benefit is a major reason why wireless equipment manufacturers have elected to use Agere's APP550 for their radio network controller and then the APP300 for their Node B.

Agere's Link Layer Processor Lowest Cost Solution For Targeted Applications
Agere's LLP ranks as the world's first to offer a solution for fully terminating and aggregating packet and ATM protocols in a single device. A packet aggregation and line interface processor, LLP offers equipment manufacturers and their customers a swift realization of any service to any network, by consolidating five different functions into one chip:

• HDLC
• ML-MC/PPP (multi-link, multi-class, point-to-point protocol)
• ATM TC/IMA (ATM transmission convergence and inverse multiplexing for ATM)
• AAL1 (ATM Adaptation Layer 1) and
• T1/E1 Line Framing.

All primary competitors require at least three separate chips to perform all five functions at the channel densities that LLP supports. Agere's high level of integration lowers system line card costs for manufacturers by approximately 40 percent and power consumption by 50 percent, down to as low as 2.8 watts. The ATM and IP integration simplifies system design and engineering, as well as allows customers to economically and easily migrate from traditional ATM networks to newer IP networks with minimal or no equipment hardware changes.

Processing ATM cells and IP packets at speeds ranging from 8 Mbits/s to 155 Mbits/s, the chip broadens Agere's multi-service and wireless chip solutions by targeting applications such as wireless 3G Node B/BTS base stations, wireless radio network controllers (RNCs), base station controllers (BSCs), media gateways, multi-service access nodes and access/edge routers. The level of integration of the device, coupled with the standard software interface for all applications, lowers product development costs for manufacturers.

analogZONE Says . . .

The term "new platform" can mean many things in the strange argot of technology marketing. In this case it is Agere's term for an especially-potent pairing of two new communication processors with a comprehensive set of reference designs and development tools that target the emerging converged wireline and wireless equipment market. Being allergic to jargon myself, I should explain that Agere is using the term "converged" to describe the growing trend to ship voice, video, and data services across the same network -- typically either DSL or cable, although there is lots of activity in the wireless arena these days as well.

The two silicon elements of the platform are their new APP300 series network processors and a Link Layer Processor (LLP). The AP300 NP is a derivative of the earlier APP500 chip (reviewed back in 2002) that was originally developed for edge aggregation, and has been slimmed down for the lower speed and cost requirements of multi-service media gateways and DSLAMs. As with its big brother, the AP300 has a very well-integrated collection of configurable pipeline elements wrapped around a processor core that's been optimized for the tasks involved with communication applications (see Fig. 1). It's powerful enough that it can absorb the full brunt of its two GbE ports worth of wire-speed data without breathing hard -- even while doing complex tagging and manipulation. This is in good part thanks to the hardware cores save precious op cycles by taking care of tasks like PDU assembly, buffer management and traffic shaping. One excellent example of this is the PD300's stream editor block which does the manipulation for both header and data. It can perform enough operations to support stacked VLAN processing, with several levels (probably four or five) of encapsulation at full wire speed.

The APP300's companion is the LLP which is designed specifically for terminating framing and PHY-layer functions for multi-service traffic. The device physically terminates on the line side with up to 84 T1 interfaces (aprox 150 Mbit/s) that can be connected to standard external LIU circuits. The system side termination is a SPI-3 POS-PHY-L2 that can support granularity down to the n x DS-0 (64 kbit/s) level. It can terminate and provide L1/L1.5 protocols for TCP/IP and T1 connections. It also terminates ATM AAL1 services in a stand-alone manner, and can support ATM L2 and L5 by allowing the APP300 to do some of the extra processing tasks. The LLP can also support HDLC to multi-link PPP, a protocol frequently used for binding multiple T1s in access routers and other gateway equipment, or inverse multiplexed ATM (IMA). While it does not have a programmable processor per se, its programmable processing elements assure that it can be reconfigured to tack evolving standards or accommodate proprietary signaling/data structures. Its ability to support both ATM and IP simultaneously will be especially valuable for building "future-proofed" 3G/4G products that can run with ATM infrastructures today, but migrate to IP networks as they become available.

APP 300 family offers a family of chips that range from a 600 Mbit/s device that consumes 4 W and a 2 Gbit/s chip that pumps 7 W worth of heat into your DSLAM. While not the lowest power for a processor, the NP300 provides an excellent operations/mW ratio for the task-intensive functions involved with delivering multimedia.

But as important as the silicon is, the software tools, reference design, and development platform are the essential elements that turn the whole collection of ingredients into a tasty package that cuts development cost and time. Borrowing much from the enterprise-class "Festino" development system I reviewed earlier in 2005, Agere has attempted to make equipment development easier and cheaper with an access-oriented version of its "platform approach" that does all the non-value-added work for developers. The non-chassis based board supports pluggable I/O modules for DSL modems, Ethernet, LLP, and other hardware (see Fig. 2). While not as bulky or expensive as the Festino development system, it has everything developers need to get deeply involved with software development well ahead of the actual hardware.

The software development suite seems to be fully-equipped and includes a collection of application-specific Functional Programming Interface (FPI) packages (see Fig. 3). The FPIs are pre-configured modules of production-ready code that handle all data plane functions and present object-oriented application specific APIs to the programmer. According to Agere, this relives the programmer from around 85% of the software tasks normally required to bring up a new system, allowing them to focus on adding their "secret sauce" to the project. For example, a "canned" DSLAM package can be easily modified to support proprietary messaging between the DSLAM and its CPE or between line cards within the DSLAM. Agere has already produced a bountiful collection of reference design software packages, including a Wireless 3G NodeB, BTS, RNC, Media Gateways for VoIP, as well as wireleine applications like access routers, multi-services access nodes, and DSLAMs.

And best of all, it's free, with no extra fees for source code.

Multi-service broadband is finally on the roll, especially in Asia but even in North America. It will also find apps in Africa and India for delivering low-cost voice and multimedia. Attraction is the reduced infrastructure capital and OPEX costs and flexibility of using single access channel for all media. Thanks to its excellent price/performance ratio and comprehensive development support, Agere stands a good chance of playing a big part in the multi-service revolution and winning a place in many of the boxes that will deliver voice, video, and data across the world.

Agere's APP300 and LLP families include multiple product versions and are scheduled to sample in Q2 of 2005 with APP prices ranging from $35 to $200 in large volumes. The wireless versions, the LLP-W, have prices ranging $50 to $150 in large volumes. LLP devices targeted at higher capacity are priced from $150 to $400.

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