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connectivityZONE Products for the week of May 12, 2008
Actel Corporation Says…
Partners With Pigeon Point Systems For TCA Management Solutions
Expansion of Actel’s TCA Offering Further Establishes Fusion PSCs as Silicon Standard for Sophisticated System Management
Building upon its existing portfolio for the growing TCA market, Actel Corporation has partnered with Pigeon Point Systems, the market leading supplier of TCA management components, to deliver system management platforms for higher performance applications. Leveraging Actel’s single-chip, mixed-signal Fusion Programmable System Chip (PSC) with an embedded FPGA-optimized 32-bit ARM Cortex-M1 processor and optimized Pigeon Point firmware, the first products will include development kits to speed the design of Advanced Telecom Computing Architecture (ATCA) and Advanced Mezzanine Card (AMC) carrier board management controllers, all based on the Intelligent Platform Management Interface (IPMI) architecture.
Defined by the PCI Industrial Computer Manufacturers Group (PICMG), the Telecom Computing Architecture (TCA) encompasses ATCA, AdvancedMC (AMC) and the MicroTCA frameworks. An industry-standard specification experiencing rapid deployment in applications including telecommunications access, storage and data center equipment, ATCA provides manageability and redundancy at the shelf level and an IPMI-based standard management framework at the board level. According to industry estimates from market research firm VDC, the opportunity for the overall standards-based TCA system market is expected to be roughly $1.8 billion by 2009.
“As evidenced by their leading market share, Pigeon Point Systems’ industry-standard firmware is broadly chosen by major telecom equipment suppliers for their development programs. For this reason, we believe this partnership with Pigeon Point will ease the widespread adoption of Fusion-based system management implementations,” said Yankin Tanurhan, vice president, system solutions and advanced applications at Actel.
Fusion PSCs — The Silicon Standard for TCA System Management
Actel’s mixed-signal Fusion PSCs incorporate analog functions, embedded flash and FPGA fabric in a single chip. As a result, the Actel Fusion PSC can integrate system management functions and offer programmable flexibility, providing an implementation that reduces parts count by 25 percent and board area by roughly 33 percent. At a time when designers are searching for system and power management solutions that minimizes system cost and complexity while improving power efficiency and reliability, Actel’s mixed-signal Fusion PSC family is an ideal alternative to multiple discrete devices.
“Designing a TCA management controller around a mixed-signal Fusion PSC yields a controller that is optimized for TCA and potentially integrates board-specific logic into the FPGA as well, with resulting benefits in bill of materials (BOM) costs and other areas for our mutual customers,” said Mark Overgaard, president at Pigeon Point Systems. “Fusion PSCs with an embedded soft ARM Cortex-M1 processor give TCA designers a new high-performance option for easily managing the critical system functions that affect the efficiency and power consumption of their systems.”
“Our existing Fusion-based, turnkey MicroTCA platforms have experienced tremendous success. The combination of our mixed-signal Fusion PSC, industry-leading Pigeon Point firmware, the FPGA-optimized ARM Cortex M-1 processor, and reference designs represents a platform able to support even higher performance TCA applications, giving us reason to expect this trend to continue as we roll out our new TCA offerings over the coming quarters,” Tanurhan continued.
EN-Genius Says…
The Actel and Pigeon Point jointly-developed TCA chassis management system takes a lot of the guesswork and cost out of providing this critical element of an ATCA/uTCA-based design. That’s why I expect this smart pairing of technologies to become increasingly popular as ATCA/uTCA becomes the de-facto building block for high-performance embedded computing and networking systems. The lower component count and increased flexibility it offers should help it find quick acceptance in the telecom systems where Pigeon Point is already a major player as well as the many other markets such as server farms, military, medical, and industrial systems.
 This system is a significant improvement on Actel’s earlier uTCA management solution that I reviewed back in October 2006. Both designs use the same unique programmable mixed-signal technology to provide both the control logic and analog sensor interfaces required to monitor critical voltages and temperatures in an ATCA/uTCA element, but this latest incarnation adds more channel capacity and a much more powerful processor. Instead of the earlier 8-bit 8051 processor, you get their 32-bit Cortex M1, a three-stage pipeline soft processor core based on the ARMv6m instruction set and executes all existing Thumb code. The Cortex can support clock speeds up to 70 MHz and can be implemented on an Actel Fusion mixed-signal SoC using as few as 4435 tiles. It comes pre-configured with an ARM AMBA AHB-lite interface and a separate memory interface to make I/O connections simple and easy.
The M1 extra processing power is much more than what’s required to support basic voltage, current, and temperature monitoring functions, allowing you to use the remainder for other applications such as acting as a bridge between a shelf manager or an outside manager for the system’s mezzanine cards. In addition to the extensive libraries of functions offered by Actel and Pigeon Point (including a complete set of mandatory IPMI commands plus most optional ones), the GNU-based C compiler/debugger and Eclipse-based IDE make rolling your own code about as straightforward as any other embedded application. While Actel did not mention it during the briefing, I’ll speculate that it would not be hard to whip up some code that allowed the processor to run a web-based GUI, and perhaps a communications protocol stack of your choice.
 If you can wait a little while, the cute little development kit that Actel and Pigeon Point will be rolling out shortly (some time in Q3 2008) will make your development effort even easier. The card provides an AMC interface for mezzanine boards and a generous area for breadboarding and prototype work.
The first turnkey ATCA Blade and AMC Carrier reference designs developed by Actel and Pigeon Point Systems will be offered as development kits for ATCA blade IPMCs and for ATCA AMC carrier IPMCs, implemented on a common bench top development board platform. The development board will also be available in Q3 2008.
Reference designs for MicroTCA PM and AMC are available now. Actel Libero integrated development environment (IDE) is also available for download immediately at Actel’s web site. For more information, visit the TCA products home page.
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