Processors combine to boost infrastructure power

An Emerson Network Power Embedded Computing product story

Edited by the Electronicstalk editorial team Jan 16, 2004

A new dual-processor PowerPC PCI Mezzanine Card is aimed at telecomms infrastructure applications.

A new dual-processor PowerPC PCI Mezzanine Card (PMC) is aimed at telecomms infrastructure applications.

Dubbed the PmPPC2750, the new Processor PMC (PrPMC) card is optimised for distributed multiprocessing.

The PmPPC2750 gives telecomms OEMs an easy way to add processing power to telecomms systems equipped with PMC expansion sites.

The PmPPC2750 makes an ideal control plane processor for optical and wireless infrastructure.

It is also well suited for augmenting packet processing and routing performance in voice gateways, and for enhancing protocol processing performance in SS7 and Sigtran signalling control points and gateways.

The PmPPC2750 features a pair of 800MHz IBM PowerPC PPC750FX processors, each with 512Kbyte of L2 cache.

A Marvell Discovery GT-64260B PCI bridge, equipped with a 133MHz processor bus, gives the two processors high-speed access to external I/O devices and up to 512Mbyte of shared SDRAM.

The PmPPC2750 also provides two 10/100Base-T Ethernet ports, two serial ports, an eight-channel DMA controller, and an I2C bus controller.

"Our dual-processor modules give designers a flexible way to add processing power to telecom systems", said Todd Wynia, Vice President of Marketing at Artesyn.

"Designers can use the processors in a loosely coupled, distributed fashion to process multiple channels and functions, accelerate compute-intensive functions, and enhance fault tolerance.

These modules make it easy for equipment designers utilising standard or custom platforms to significantly boost control and packet processing performance for applications ranging from softswitches and signalling control points to basestation controllers and voice gateways".

RTOS support for the PmPPC2750 includes Wind River Systems' VxWorks and QNX Software Systems' Neutrino.

The PmPPC2750 costs $2350 in single-piece quantity and will be available in the first quarter of 2004.