Switched fabric board embeds Ethernet switching

The FP 110/008 switched fabric board complements the range of CompactPCI PICMG 2.16 and VME64x VITA 31.1 packet switched single board computers from Concurrent Technologies.

New from Concurrent Technologies is the FP 110/008 switched fabric board, which complements the company's range of CompactPCI PICMG 2.16 and VME64x VITA 31.1 packet switched single board computers.

The FP 110/008 is an "unmanaged" embedded Ethernet switching platform that provides a low cost, low power, switching solution for telecomms OEMs and integrators.

Consuming less than 16W, it offers ten 10/100/1000Mbit/s auto-negotiating Ethernet ports, eight accessible via a PICMG 2.16 or a VITA 31.1 packet switched backplane.

The switch core contains a wire-speed, nonblocking, Layer 2, quality of service (QoS) switch fabric that includes VLAN security features for Layer 2 firewall protection.

Also provided is PICMG 2.9 IPMI system monitoring and hot insertion/removal to the backplane.

Typical applications include networking equipment, VoIP telephony systems and blade-based servers.

Using the FP 110/008 switched fabric board within a CompactPCI PICMG 2.16 or a VME64x VITA 31.1 system enables a tried and tested method of implementing a LAN-based multiprocessor architecture by leveraging readily available Ethernet hardware, TCP/IP software, clustering and other network management tools.

The use of standard networking techniques offers a simpler, more efficient method of remote booting boards within the chassis, and simplified intercommunication between boards, particularly where different operating systems and CPU architectures are being used within the same chassis.

It can also be used as a method of offloading tasks from the standard CompactPCI or VME backplane, thereby improving overall application efficiency.

The FP 110/008 enables up to eight computing node boards to interconnect in a chassis that supports a packet switched backplane (PICMG 2.16 or VITA 31).

A second FP 110/008 could be added to the chassis for redundancy or increasing the number of 10/100/1000Mbit/s ports.

Using the Marvell Link Street 88E6185 Ethernet switch device, the FP 110/008 sustains full duplex full wire 10/100/1000Mbit/s speeds on all ten ports.

Ports 1 to 8 are used for connection to the nodes on the packet switched backplane.

Port 9 is a board-to-board link to connect to a second FP 110/008 board for switch fabric redundancy or to increase the number of network nodes.

Port 10 is via an RJ45 on the front panel.

The switch device "learns" and caches up to 8192 MAC addresses in its filtering database.

The switch can handle time-critical/multimedia traffic such as voice, video and data as it uses four hardware priority queues per port and supports a range of QoS traffic classifications: port ID, MAC address, IEEE802.1p, IEEE802.1Q, IPv4 and IPv6.

For security it provides port-based VLAN, or IEEE802.1Q VLAN support for up to 4096 VLANs.

Monitoring traffic can be achieved with the extensive statistics counters including support for remote monitoring (RMON).

The board's health and status can also be monitored via an IPMB0 interface to an onboard microcontroller, providing IPMI support compatible with PICMG 2.9.

For companies that require an embedded Ethernet switch in an industry standard chassis, the FP 110/008 provides a reliable low power switch.

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