Date: 26/09/2012
High density ATCA media processing blade released by Emerson
Emerson Network Power has announced a new AdvancedTCA (ATCA) media processing blade and claims that they have the highest density of digital signal processing (DSP) cores of any commercially available blade.
The ATCA-8320 consists of up to 576 DSP cores and run sophisticated media processing software which enables communications equipment companies to simplify and accelerate the development and deployment of high density IP media processing applications. These applications include session border controllers, media gateways and servers, media resource functions, mobile video optimization, video communications and conferencing servers, and interactive voice and video response systems.
The new blade is the first result of collaboration between Emerson Network Power and Octasic. The ATCA-8320 is the first ATCA blade in the market that utilizes Octasic’s innovative asynchronous DSP technology and also features Octasic’s Vocallo MGW voice and video software. The developers can use this software to create and use arrays of media processing resources in highly complex voice- and video-enabled applications.
The ATCA-8320 blade can enable a major reduction in the hardware footprint of the telecom central office by replacing many traditional server or other media processing blades when adding voice or video functionality to a communications system. The blade can offload voice and video processing from an X86-based system at resolutions up to 1080p. Its unique “gateway-on-a-blade” architecture also makes it appropriate for use as a standalone gateway element, allowing a high degree of scalability from very small systems up to very large. In addition to a bank of up to 24 Octasic OCT2224M DSPs, the ATCA-8320 blade features an eight-core Freescale QorIQ P4080 device for advanced IP flow management and distribution and a dual core Intel Core i7 processor for local control and management applications. This unique combination of processor technologies is designed to maximize the flow processing and management capability of a single ATCA blade. A white paper from Emerson Network Power describes the system architectures that this combination of technologies enables in the implementation of the most common media processing network elements.
“The ability to manipulate media streams in carrier networks has become a source of critical advantage to network operators and service providers. The ATCA-8320 brings multicore DSPs and the powerful Vocallo voice and video software together with Emerson’s leading ATCA system heritage and thermal design skill, resulting in an industry-leading media processing density for the next generation of ATCA-based voice and video processing systems,” said Rob Pettigrew, marketing director of Emerson Network Power’s Embedded Computing business. “By enabling developers to offer a low entry cost and pay-as-you-grow options for their users, this is the latest example of how Emerson is working to address the time-to-market, efficiency, and performance concerns of equipment manufacturers.”
The ATCA-8320 is optimized to work with Emerson Network Power’s range of ATCA system platforms which cover two-slot, six-slot and 14-slot variants that are designed to meet the need of both telecom central office and network data center environments.
For more information: www.Emerson.com/ATCA
Source: Emerson