[June 21, 2004] ARTESYN ANNOUNCES DUAL-PROCESSOR ADVANCEDTCA Artesyn Communication Products, supplier of blade products for telecom OEMs, announced the KatanaQp, a new AdvancedTCA (ATCA) processor blade for telecom infrastructure applications. The new ATCA blade, equipped with a pair of PowerPC MPC7447A processors, features four PTMC expansion sites, redundant IPMI-based system management interfaces, and a high-speed PICMG 3.1-compliant ATCA interface with ten Gigabit Ethernet channels. The KatanaQp features a pair of MPC7447A processors (up to 1.4 GHz), which can be used for either distributed or symmetric multiprocessing (SMP). Both processors are equipped with an Altivec vector processing unit, 32 Kbytes of on-die L1 instruction/data cache, 512 Kbytes of on-die L2 cache, and cache coherency mechanisms for symmetric multiprocessing. A Marvell GT64460 Discovery III system controller gives the processors high-speed access to up to two Gbytes of DDR SDRAM memory and 64 Mbytes of flash memory. The Marvel controller also provides a local PCI bus, which enables it to exchange control information with the PTMC complex. The KatanaQp’s four PTMC mezzanine expansion sites provide industry standard 32-bit PCI-X control and CTbus (Computer Telephony Bus) data interfaces to external modules. The CTbus and PCI-X interfaces are also used on card to link the four sites, enabling them to exchange control information and TDM data directly. This close coupling between sites makes Katana ideal for building integrated systems that combine network access (LAN or WAN) with packet, protocol, and media processing functionality (i.e., DSP farm) on the same blade. The KatanaQp provides a high-speed PICMG 3.1-compliant ATCA fabric interface that features high-speed control and data plane connections. The control plane, utilizing two Gigabit Ethernet channels originating from the Marvell Discovery system controller, connects directly to the ATCA Base Fabric. The data plane, managed by a 24-port Ethernet switch, combines eight Gigabit Ethernet channels from the PTMC sites (two per site) with one Gigabit Ethernet channel from the Discovery system controller. The switch, in turn, uses eight Gigabit Ethernet ports to connect to the ATCA High Speed Fabric. The KatanaQp also features a PICMG 3.0 Intelligent Platform Management Interface (IPMI version 1.5 with ATCA extensions). This interface, which incorporates dual I2C-based Intelligent Platform Management Buses (IPMB), enhances system management by making it easy for shelf management controllers to monitor, control and exchange management with the KatanaQp. [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]