Telecom Platform Deployment Featured Article

AdvancedTCA (News - Alert) (ATCA) technology is used extensively in telecom platform deployments and is essentially a series of specifications that incorporates the latest trends in high speed interconnect technologies, next-generation processors, and improved reliability, availability and serviceability.

Integrated Device Technology (News - Alert) (IDT), a provider of analog and digital mixed-signal semiconductor solutions, has just revealed that its RapidIO Gen 2 switches provide the interconnect protocol foundation for Prodrive's award winning RapidIO (News - Alert) ATCA system software.

"The innovative switching platform from IDT, along with the inherent features of RapidIO, enables us to deliver this award-winning software," said Pieter Janssen, CEO of Prodrive, in a statement. "Specifically designed for the ATCA market, our products offer customers the end-to-end system reliability they require for mission critical applications, such as semiconductor manufacturing, where any down time can result in lost revenue.”

RapidIO, the high-throughput, low-latency interconnect protocol optimized for embedded systems, minimizes overhead through packet header and payload size optimization, resulting in 95 percent protocol efficiency for 256 byte payloads common to embedded systems. Further, with its lane rates of 6.25 Gbaud, RapidIO hardware platform delivers 20 Gbps of performance per four-lane link - more than twice the performance of 10 GbE solutions. 

The ATCA technology also delivers several key features and performance advantages including hardware error recovery, repeated port write for hotswap, and designated registers for improved real-time diagnostics at the application level.

These performance-oriented features benefit the semiconductor manufacturing industry as well as several telecom platform deployment platforms in industrial, military, imaging, and high-performance computing markets.

"We are pleased to see Prodrive use our RapidIO switches to develop award-winning products," added Tom Sparkman, vice president of the Communications Division at IDT. "Prodrive's selection of IDT's RapidIO products is an affirmation of our superior product performance, scalability, and reliability in embedded applications.”