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How the Intel Xeon 5600 Update Will Impact the ATCA Blade Landscape

Another major technology shift is happening in 2010 that will impact what telecom equipment manufacturers and network equipment providers select for ATCA-based deployments. For years, TEMs and NEPs have deployed ATCA platforms and now must consider both field upgrades as well as future market needs when assessing the new Intel (News - Alert) processors.

The new Intel silicon processor technology (Xeon 5600 series), dramatically increases transistor density while enhancing performance and energy efficiency within a smaller version of the existing architecture (Xeon 5500 series). The Xeon 5500-based processors typically used in an ATCA processor blade are 60W and four cores. The next-generation Xeon 5600 options are 60W and six cores or 40W and four cores, which create some unique alternatives.

To complicate matters further, the PICMG (News - Alert) 3.1 Rev 2 ATCA standard is being finalized to offer 40G bandwidth architecture sometime in 2010. Today, many data centers have 10G uplinks, and many applications are driving the ATCA ecosystem to meet the demand of higher bandwidth with four 10G links.

Let’s consider a mobile video application that may be constrained by processor performance. In this scenario the application may not come close to saturating four 10G links (40G) but is in desperate need for more processor speed. In this case, the design consideration should be a new Xeon 5600 dual-processor 60W ATCA blade that is more than 200W per slot, but cannot take advantage of the 40G bandwidth. On the other hand, a typical deep packet inspection application may be constrained by bandwidth. In this case the application can operate quite efficiently on a single or dual four-core Xeon 5600 blade, but needs to adopt a 40G solution immediately. In this case, there is no interest in enhanced power and cooling to support more than 200W per slot.




Final Score

The success of implementing open standard designs is determined by faster time to market at a reduced cost. When combined, these two technology shifts create consideration for several design alternatives. If multiple design paths are taken, the purchase volumes will become fragmented across a large selection of “standard” products. Creating an ATCA architecture that can support up to 300W per slot and 40G bandwidth for the same cost as the current 200W – 10G solutions is the only real winner. IT

Jeff Hudgins is vice president of product management at NEI Inc. (www.nei.com).

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