networkZONE Products for the week of July 2, 2007
PMC-Sierra Says…
Gigabit Fiber Access Gateways Support all FTTH and FTTN Technologies including EPON, GPON, Gigabit Ethernet and VDSL2
PMC-Sierra, Inc. has announced the availability of two fiber access gateway solutions, the MSP7150 EPON/GPON gateway SoC for Fiber To The Home (FTTH) and the MSP7140 VDSL2 Gateway SoC for Fiber To The Node (FTTN). These SoCs deliver gigabit-per-second line-rate IPV4/V6 routing, Network Address Translation (NAT), Quality of Service (QoS), encryption and a multi-channel VoIP terminal adaptor, and consume less than 1.5W of power. PMC-Sierra's fiber access gate way solutions provide OEMs and ODMs with a common platform architecture to support multiple high-speed access technologies in various geographic markets. In addition, service providers can rely on equipment based on PMC-Sierra's multi-service platform to deliver carrier-grade IP services into the digital home.
"PMC-Sierra's gateway SoCs use an innovative multi-threaded architecture to provide the Gigabit connectivity, flexibility, and the features needed to enable next-generation broadband gateways that accommodate evolving service models," said Joseph Byrne, senior analyst, The Linley Group.
"PMC-Sierra is the only company that has shipped millions of devices into production FTTH deployments, and we have leveraged this unique expertise to ensure that our fiber access gateway solutions exceed the performance requirements for FTTH and FTTN topologies," said Victor Vaisleib, vice president and general manager of PMC-Sierra's Fiber Access Business Unit. "Our high-performance gigabit-per-second fiber access gateway solution enables the management and delivery of carrier-grade voice, video and data services from the central office to the home."
Advanced Architecture Enables Breakthrough Performance and Flexibility
Powered by a 600MHz MIPS processor core with cutting-edge hardware multi-threading, the MSP7140/50 solutions deliver:
- Breakthrough performance and flexibility, while consuming less than 1.5 Watts;
- Gigabit-per-second throughput;
- Performance to support new ultra-high bandwidth LAN interface technologies;
- Fully programmable packet processing acceleration to accommodate future service models and home network configurations;
- Headroom to support gateway-hosted applications, such as integrated storage/media server, fixed mobile convergence (FMC) clients, and remote access servers; and
- A Linux-based OS that allows for the leveraging of industry-standard middleware.
The MSP7140/50 integrate three gigabit ports, two USB 2.0 full-speed PHYs (physical interfaces), a 66 MHz PCI bus, DDR2 memory controller, multi-channel VoIP terminal adapter, IPSec accelerator and hardware protection against small packet flooding to protect critical services from packet loss during periods of high network activity.
PMC-Sierra's MSP7150 supports both IEEE 802.3ah-compliant EPON and ITU-T G.984-compliant GPON fiber access gateway solutions. With an integrated VDSL2 modem, the MSP7140 is the ideal solution for multi-service VDSL2-based gateway. The MSP7140 device is the first to demonstrate VDSL2 interoperability with all installed central office VDSL1 and VDSL2 chipsets, and is backwards compatible to ADSL2+.
PMC-Sierra offers the following designs and development platforms, including BOM-cost optimized schematics, gerbers and documentation: PM2330-KIT for EPON, PM2331-KIT for GPON, PM2329-KIT for VDSL2, and PM2332-KIT for Gigabit Ethernet fiber access gateways.
EN-Genius Says . . .
Like several other big networking chip makers, PMC has pinned its hopes for the future on grabbing a chunk of the PON CPE market to compensate for the flattening of new DSL opportunities. To compete within the extremely tight performance, functionality and cost constraints that a high-volume carrier-oriented application like this demands, our friends in Burnaby have taken some of the best elements of their current broadband gateway and GbE networking products and combined them with the GPON technology they got when they acquired Passavé last year. The result is a series of ONU products that expand on their earlier MSP7120/MSP7130 products introduced last year with more speed and functionality and the ability to address fiber-to the-home, fiber-to-the-MDU/MTU, and even fiber-to-the neighborhood applications.
 The MSP7150 integrates a complete home gateway solution with an extra 1GbE port that is intended to drive a standard GPON MAC (see Fig. 1). The MSP7140 is the same gateway except it replaces the GOPN logic with a VDSL2/ADSL2-capable digital data pump that drives an external AFE (The PM4380 for VDSL and the PM4381 for ADSL2). It still uses a PCI host interface because most 802.11, and other peripheral chips still use the parallel bus. PMC expects this to change in the next generation and said that we'll probably see PCI Express-equipped variants of the MSP7140/MSP7150 in mid-2008 or early 2009. Power consumption is impressively low, at under 1 W when running both Ethernet MACs in 100 Mbit/s mode and under 1.5 W when running in GbE mode.
Like their predecessors, the MSP7140/7150 access gateway devices use a multi-threaded MIPS processor to handle both the networking and application tasks in the CPE. They are powered by an upgraded 600 MHz MIPS32 multi-thread processor core that can support up to seven threads (vs five for the MSP7130). Some of the extra crunch is used to accommodate the higher data rates that GPON delivers, but much of it is expected to be devoted to more sophisticated applications.
PMC says that the enhanced multi-thread architecture can support separate custom applications without threatening gateway critical workings or bogging down core network functions. This should enable the processor to support fully programmable packet processing acceleration and the flexibility to accommodate future service models. Conversations with PMC lead me to believe that much of the new processing power will be used to provide smarter, more granular QoS management and policing, as well as gateway-hosted applications such as fixed/mobile convergence, remote management, and networked media storage. One great possible application would be a VoIP gateway which takes only 50 MIPS worth of the processor's attention to fully support a single channel worth of G.711 VoIP coding, voice processing, while running the full SIP protocol stack. The multi-thread architecture also reduces the host loading caused by current 802.11n chips by making use of stall cycles in I/O transactions to take care of other tasks. This reduces amount of processing power required to drive a typical Wi-Fi MAC from around 300 MIPS to 80 MIPS.
This is an interesting contrast to Mindspeed's Comcerto multi-core CPE architecture reviewed a couple of weeks ago, one of my other current favorite CPE products. As I said in that review, Mindspeed raises some valid concerns about the challenges of programming a multi-threaded machine and the potential for non-deterministic behavior at high processor loads.
Without actually having programmed either machine I'd defend PMC's products with some educated speculation that their careful structuring of the multi-thread logic, combined with the large amount of available MIPS should keep any problems with determinism at bay except under the heaviest traffic loads. I cannot really speculate on the actual programming difficulty other than to say that the Linux-based software environment looks relatively straightforward, even if it has open-source extensions to support open-source multi-core, multi-thread operations. The development environment allows you to make use of all open-source tools, including cool stuff like the Asterisk IP-PBX platform. And since it's true open-source, you can also add proprietary SIP stacks and applications, if you like.
The MSP7140/50 fiber access gateway devices and reference design platforms will be sampling in early Q3 2007 with pricing under $20 in volume quantities.
Data Sheet MSP7140
Data Sheet MSP7150
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