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George Shenoda, Chief Technical Officer RadiSys Corporation VERSION 2.0 | January 2005
CONTENTS
Introduction.. ......................................................... 2 What is ATCA............................................................ 2 What Products is ATCA Capable of Supporting..... 3 What Benefits Does the ATCA Platform Offer...... 4 Considering Different Architectures.. ................ 4 Technology and Products Status.......................... 5 Conclusion.............................................................. 5 Glossary................................................................. 5 References............................................................. 5
INTRODUCTION
Advanced Telecommunications Computing Architecture, known as ATCA, is a new system form factor defined by the PCI Industrial Computers Manufacturers Group (PICMG) to provide an industry standard platform that enables building telecommunication grade products in a multi-vendor compatible environment. This form factor is becoming a popular standard for such products because of the promising economical and functional advantages it is positioned to offer.
Specifications that support strict regulatory requirements such as NEBS with long life components and advanced power distribution and cooling concepts Specifications that support multiple types of Switching Fabrics (the core of the platform), such as Ethernet (GbE), PCI Express and others
The result is a standard that offers definitive advantages over its predecessors such as cPCI (Compact PCI), including: Regulatory requirements (NEBS, etc.) as well as high availability enabling requirements Higher power allowance, more advanced power distribution and larger module area as well as wider spacing between modules enable more functionality and higher performance per shelf Higher capacity and the ability to mix various types of modules and technologies enable the convergence of multiple types of equipment and multiple applications in one platform Allowing rear mounted modules permits additional functionality per slot or rear interface cablin
What is ATCA
ATCA is a set of documents specifying all the electrical and mechanical requirements necessary to create an industry standard platform. This documentation includes specifications for platform elements such as chassis dimensions, backplane properties, module size and backplane interface specifications, power rating, cooling, etc. The specifications are designated the series 3.xx as opposed to 2.xx for the Compact PCI specified earlier by the same body. The main objectives of the ATCA standard is to enable building carrier grade convergent systems, i.e., systems that include computing and communications products for myriad applications. Specifically, it is aimed at converging telecom access and edge equipment functions with data center and storage equipment functions in a modular fashion. This modular approach enables both equipment producers and users to employ the same chassis/backplane for multiple types of products, utilizing different modules, as explained later. As such, the ATCA standard was developed with the following attributes, among others, as the main guiding principals. Scalable Capacity of up to 2.5 Tbps (per chassis) with a centralized switching hub interconnected to all module slots in a star (radial) or a full mesh configuration Redundancy throughout the system configuration to achieve over 99.999% availability (Carrier Grade), while allowing less demanding applications to utilize a non-redundant configuration for lower cost Modularity and configurability to enable multiple modules with various interfaces and different technologies, such as DSPs, NPUs, CPUs, and storage media, to be mixed and matched for diverse applications in the same platform
Additional software (Middleware) specifications to support high availability platform infrastructure are under development by organizations such as the Service Availability Forum. Such high availability infrastructure middleware enables building robust ATCA, as well as other platforms such as cPCI, that provide a standard foundation for high availability, distributed computing and system management capabilities across the industry. A distinctive advantage of such standards is building multivendor embedded systems that simplify building higher layer applications by NEPs (Network Equipment Providers) in a shorter time to market.
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Figure 1 depicts an outline of the physical attributes of the platform. different interface modules are be required, e.g., a blade server may only require Ethernet interfaces, while an SGSN requires Ethernet in addition to standard network interfaces such as E1/DS1 and SONET/SDH interfaces (OC-3c/STM-1). This brief description illustrates how the SGSN utilizes certain modules/building blocks common with the blade server while requiring another set of different modules/building blocks. Media Gateway: Media Gateways are widely used in service provider and enterprise networking applications. An MG is a good example of how an ATCA platform may be utilized in more than one market segment and a variety of applications with satisfactory economical and technical results. An MG is also a good example of employing the building block concept to achieve re-use of modules/building blocks common with other equipment. Of the many applications of a media gateway, multiple protocol conversions for voice services can be used as an example. Because of the variety of service interfaces between TDM and Packet Voice services, it is necessary to provide interworking functionality between the different interfaces to create seamless services among the different subscribers. Of course the media gateway is simultaneously required to support signaling, which could also be multiple types of signaling at the same time. To achieve that, the media gateway requires the use of CPUs (for signaling and/or packet processing) as well as specialized processors to deal with the interworking functionality, which is typically between voice over TDM and packet voice over ATM or IP, but could also be between ATM and IP. This indicates that an MG can use the switching fabric and CPUs utilized by the blade server (for inter-module and interchassis communications, management and signaling/ control functions) while requiring specialized modules for interworking and voice packet processing. The latter could be DSPs or NPUs depending on the system architecture and design as well as the requirements. For example, if compression/decompression/silence suppression are required, it would be best if DSPs are employed. Otherwise, NPUs will do the job for interworking.
RADISYS Whitepaper | ATCA: A Practical Perspective From this description, it should be clear that there are common elements between all three types of products and some unique elements in each. Of course the higher layer applications may be quite different, but those are achieved via software that is integrated with the embedded system platform based on ATCA.
BLADE SERVER
Figure 2 illustrates, in color code, the similarities and differences in building blocks among the three product examples just discussed.
Compute Module
SS7 Processor
Disk Node
GE Switch GE Switch
GbE I/F
SGSN
Compute Module Quad OC-3c I/F SS7 Processor 16 E1/DS1 I/F
GE Switch
GE Switch
MEDIA GATEWAY
GbE I/F
Difference in Switching Fabrics Technologies. There are many switching fabric technologies that can be used as an ATCA switching fabric, e.g., 10/100 bT Ethernet, GbE, Fiber Channel, PCI-Express, Infiniband, Cell Based fabrics to name a few. Furthermore, they can be mixed as base and extended fabrics, where the base is used for one purpose and the extended for another in the mixed fabric architectural model discussed in last paragraph. This leaves multiple choices to select the appropriate fabric for the appropriate application as well as a path of evolution as fabrics evolve. While changing a fabric will require new modules to support the interface to such fabric, the main chassis and backplane remain intact and capable of simultaneously supporting two fabrics at a time in any given chassis. This provides an added advantage of utilizing an ATCA platform without a forklift approach to evolution. Difference in Processing System and Shelf Management. There are architectures which combine the processors that handle the system and shelf management with the switching fabric in one hardware module. Others use a separate CPU module for management. In this case, the former architecture offers definite economic and simplified implementation advantages over the latter. Otherwise, there are multiple choices in software architecture, which would be the subject of another discussion.
Glossary: The following Glossary is in the order of the acronyms appearing in the paper ATCA: Advanced Telecom Computing Architecture
PICMG: PCI Industrial Computers Manufacturers Group DSPs: NPUs: NEBS: HLR: SCP: OSS: SGSN: Digital Signal Processors Network Processors (Network Processor Units) Network Equipment Building System Home Location Register Service Control Point Operations Support System Serving GPRS Support Node General Packet Radio Service Radio Network Controller 3rd Generation Partnership Project
Conclusion
ATCA is a clear winner as it will provide economies of scale coupled with scalability and high performance for multiple critical network elements in both wireless and wire based networks. Early availability products are currently undergoing lab trials by early adopters and multiple interoperability workshops are held every year by the PICMG members to ensure multivendor compatibility, another winning proposition for the industry.
References: PICMG: PICMG 3.0 R1.0 Advanced Telecommunications Computing Architecture (ATCA) PICMG 3.1 R1.0 Ethernet/Fibre Channel Over PICMG 3.0 3GPP TS 23.002: Technical Specification Group Services and Systems Aspects; Network architecture (release 5)
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