Product category:
Communications ICs (Wired)
News Release from: Agere Systems | Subject: Network processor and mapper chips
Edited by the Electronicstalk Editorial
Team on 06 June 2005
Software makes more of processors and
mappers
Agere Systems and NComm have jointly announced first-of-their-kind software update offerings that function on Agere's network processor and mapper chips.
Agere Systems and NComm have jointly announced first-of-their-kind software update offerings that function on Agere's network processor and mapper chips These offerings can prevent millions of dollars in lost revenues for telecomms service providers and businesses during planned service updates and unplanned network outages
This article was originally published on Electronicstalk on 24 Oct 2002 at 8.00am (UK)
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By using new Agere software running on Agere's Advanced PayloadPlus network processor chips, and the NComm software running on Agere's Supermapper and Ultramapper chips, service providers can dynamically reset the host chip processors controlling their network equipment with no interruption in user traffic, save an estimated $2 to $4 million dollars per year, and reduce network outage time by an average of 87 hours per year, at a cost of $42,000 per hour, according to The Gartner Group.
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The companies are demonstrating this capability, which is available now to telecomms equipment manufacturer customers, on Booth 20025 at the Supercomm 2005 trade show in Chicago from 7th to 9th June 2005.
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The NComm Trunk Management Software (TMS) with this powerful new feature called "warm start", coupled with the Agere network processor control software, enable shutdown of specific parts of the equipment without disrupting voice, video or data calls, which was typically the case before this technology's arrival.
This partial shutdown enables faster equipment restarts with less disruption than was ever before possible.
This is the industry's first turnkey wide area network solution for warm start software updates.
"With ever increasing demands in network service reliability, equipment manufacturers to whom we sell our network processors and mapper chips are valuing software capabilities that enable warm start", said Sindhu Xirasagar, Senior Marketing Manager with Agere Systems.
"With this feature, our customers can offer differentiated products that save service providers and businesses huge sums of money that would otherwise result from traffic disruptions".
"This new software is yet another example of the growing importance of reliability in the telecommunications semiconductor business equation", she added.
"Decisions about which semiconductors to use are boiling down to which supplier offers the most intelligent, economical and revenue-saving software capabilities".
"NComm's innovative software, coupled with ours, builds on Agere's growing set of software features for our network processors and mapper chips".
With global businesses increasingly dependent on continuous online operation, downtime can seriously affect a company's ability to compete and have devastating effects on the bottom line.
With the cost of downtime calculated in the millions of dollars per hour, even "planned" downtime for maintenance or software upgrades is prohibitively expensive.
By adding the warm start option to its TMS software, NComm offers equipment manufacturers the industry's first off-the-shelf deterministic capability to update or reload T1/E1, T3/E3, and Sonet/SDH wide area network physical layer software without incurring downtime.
"Whether the downtime is planned - in the case of software upgrades for planned revisions to add new features - or unplanned, due to unexpected file corruption, it is never without cost", said Bill Matern, President and founder of NComm.
"Today's enterprises have higher uptime requirements than ever before".
"Teaming with Agere to eliminate downtime for software updates allows us to deliver benefits to both equipment manufacturers and their enterprise customers".
"NComm is pleased to be working with a vendor of Agere's stature to complement our TMS module with their industry-leading chips and sophisticated software offerings".
NComm's TMS and its warm-start-capable device drivers for Agere Systems' mappers allow software to be installed without corrupting the transmission path or interfering with existing traffic on an active WAN interface.
The warm start driver uses the same application programming interface entry point as the regular framer device driver, though performs the operations necessary to configure the device without putting it into a reset condition.
While NComm's TMS warm start preserves traffic at the physical layer framer/mapper, Agere addresses the need to keep higher lay payload processing intact with the new software for its APP550 and the new APP650 network processors.
Taking payload from the framer/mapper, the network processors managed traffic in Asynchronous Transfer Mode, frame relay and, increasingly, voice over Internet protocol.
With this powerful blend of warm start capability from Agere and NComm, the system can be reloaded dynamically.
Critical processing and revenue-generating services continue to function normally, ensuring increased uptime, improved service and higher customer satisfaction.
NComm TMS is delivered with full-function turnkey software and complete source software code.
Pricing for an NComm TMS licence starts at US $20,000.
Agere's Supermapper, Ultramapper, APP550 and APP650 network processors are available now.
Agere sells its chips and software to customers, and those same customers may also buy the NComm software operating on Agere's mapper chips directly from NComm.
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