networkZONE Products for the week of June 19, 2006
AMCC Says…
AMCC's Low-Power Low-Cost Integrated Network Processor
and Traffic Manager Targets Mobile Infrastructure Apps
Applied Micro Circuits Corp. (AMCC) announced the introduction of the nP3665, an industry-leading, high-performance OC-24/2GE integrated network processor and traffic manager. The nP3665 was developed for mobile infrastructure cell and packet processing applications including traffic aggregation, backhaul and transport network layer user-plane processing. The nP3665 is a low-cost derivative of AMCC's successful nP3700 integrated network processor and traffic manager family. In combination with AMCC's Amur channelized framer and the PowerPC 440GRx processor, the nP3665 provides a complete platform for mobile infrastructure data and control plane needs.
The nP3665 is designed to be deployed in Node B, RNC, SGSN, GGSN, and Media Gateway (MGW) systems. The np3665 features industry standard interfaces including Gigabit Ethernet, SPI-3, Utopia-L2 and application software specifically developed for mobile infrastructure applications. Offering very high processing performance at low power consumption (12 mW/MIPS), the nP3665 is an integral part of a complete platform for mobile processing including a production-ready application code and hardware development platform.
The nP3665 Traffic Manager is implemented in hardware for deterministic performance. The nP3665 utilizes a hierarchical scheduling architecture to provide multiple levels (flow, pipe, subport, and port) of bandwidth provisioning and per-subscriber guarantees. Minimum and maximum bandwidth control can be configured on multiple levels. The nP3665's fine-grained Traffic Manager allows for latency sensitive real-time traffic to be schedule before "best effort" data traffic on a per-port basis.
"Mobile infrastructure is a very important market to AMCC and the release of the nP3665 marks our continued expansion into the mobile space. Increasing bandwidth requirements driven by multimedia content, along with a transition to IP-based protocols, are driving the requirements for products like the nP3665. AMCC offers a complete solution for both control and data plane processing in mobile infrastructure," said Sam Fuller, vice president of marketing at AMCC. "As the world's leading supplier of network processors, AMCC has unparalleled expertise in the unique challenges of multi-protocol networks and in meeting stringent quality of service requirements, important factors in successful mobile infrastructure equipment."
In addition to the Amur framer/mapper, which terminates up to 1024 DS0
channels of packet or cell data, and the 440GRx family of PowerPC microprocessors,
AMCC's platform for mobile infrastructure applications includes production-ready
AAL2, AAL5, IPv4, and IPv6 data-plane application software; the nP3665 evaluation
kit, which delivers a fully-functional system customers can use to begin
software development before they have their final hardware; and a complete
software development environment including a C-syntax programming environment
and cycle-accurate simulator. The Amur and PowerPC 400GRx interface with
the nP3665 over industry standard interfaces. For non-channelized applications,
a range of framer devices is available from AMCC including the Tigris and
Ohio framers. The nP3665 also interfaces with the 440GRx family of general-purpose
microprocessors for control-plane processing.
analogZONE Says . . .
It's no surprise that nearly every networking silicon maker I've talked to seems to have caught 3G fever, and AMCC is no exception. They're hoping that their down-sized version of the carrier-class network processor integrated NP and traffic manager will enable them to catch some of the huge investments wireless carriers are making in upgrading their infrastructure (ie Node-B, RNC, SGSN). to support data and multimedia services.
Their latest processor retains the same cell/packet-oriented architecture developed originally by MMC back in mid-90s for its ATM switches (nearly a decade before they were acquired by AMCC). While AMCC has much faster NPs in its inventory, the lower cost and power of this 1 Gbit/s (full-speed, full duplex) engine makes it well-targeted for implementing AAL2, AAL5, IPv4, and IPv6 processing on line cards within wireless access equipment. A typical application might be an ATCA AMC card that is used as a channelized line-card in an RNC. It's only a matter of time before most of the ATM-oriented transport and aggregation equipment embedded throughout North America and parts of Europe finally gives way to all-IP systems, but this lets you cover your options until that time.
AMCC was smart to add
an integrated traffic manager which provides hardware-based deterministic
queuing, scheduling, and admission control without eating into the processor's
programmable resources (see Fig
1). This ability makes it useful for efficient
use of bandwidth in Node B-to-RNC and RNC-to-SGSN connections where packet
and cell traffic is aggregated, packet and voice traffic separated, and
transported.
And if you're going to be using TDM connections,
the companion Amur (S1215) channelized framer provides a seamless bridge
to 155/622-Mbit/s SONET/SDH (1xSTS-12/STM-4, 4xSTS-3/STM-1) optical connections
and 12x DS3/E3 or 32xDS1/E1/J1 copper networks (see Fig 2). It gives you standards-compliant
framing, channelization and termination following SONET/SDH (STS-1 to VT/TU)
and PDH (DS3/E3 to DS1/E1/J1) multiplexing hierarchies. Built-in data processors
support Frame Relay, PPP, VCAT, GFP and ATM data mappings for up to 1024
channels with DS-0 granularity.
The reference design that accompanies the processor and framer make this a platform rather than just a chip story. Software development is accomplished using the nPsoft platform that's common to all of AMCC's network processor devices. C-like source code or assembly-level programming is used to modify AMCC-provided application-specific reference software. AMCC claims that its single thread architecture is easier to fine-tune than multi-processor devices which must be load-balanced each time the code is "tweaked." From my perspective, it looks more like AMCC's extensive collection of tools and reference designs manage to overcome the difficulties involved with programming its arcane processor architecture.
And while AMCC has an arguable point about the virtues of single-core processors, much of the ease of programming and efficient use of code is as much a function of the development tools as it is the actual architecture. A case in point would be Cavium's multi-core security engines and packet processors -- both of which come with programming tools that make it relatively straightforward to program and to tweak for efficient operation. Then again, I'm a big fan of Agere's line of complex, single-threaded (well, sort of single-threaded) network processors which is just as complex and equally arcane to program but provides deterministic performance at multi-Gigabit speeds. Much like AMCC's NP the Agere processor enjoys its share of success thanks to an extensive set of tools and complete reference designs that shield developers from most of the complexities of their innards.
But putting religious differences aside, AMCC is to be congratulated on assembling a well-provisioned reference design platform on a pizza box form factor that will help jump-start your design. The production-ready self-contained 19-inch pizza-box includes the nP3665, Amur framer, and their new low-power (3.5 W) PowerPC 440 host processor on an ATCA line card format PCB. On the software side of the fence, the platform includes sample applications and tools to support validation development, testing and debug operations. As is the custom these days, the kit also includes a parts list, schematics, Gerber plots for PCBs, and all the other information you'd need to duplicate the system.
Despite any cranky remarks I might make about its architecture, I think that AMCC has done a great job in putting together a package that will enable designers to take advantage of the performance and efficiency that the processor and its affiliated support chips offer. I'll expect to see it lurking inside a nice percentage of the next generation of RNCs and Node-B equipment -- especially those still expected to use ATM or other TDM-based transport protocols in their back-haul links.
The nP3665 will be in both commercial (0°C to +70°C) and industrial (-40°C to +85°C) grades in HFC-BGA-1023 and is sampling (production scheduled in Q4 2006), with pricing (400 MHz) at $180 in 2500-piece lots.
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