24-port gigabit ethernet switched fabric board

Concurrent technologies 24-port gigabit ethernet switched fabric board for PICMG 2.16 or VITA 31.1 based systems

Concurrent Technologies announces their latest gigabit ethernet switched fabric board, the FP 110/019, to operate alongside their range of CompactPCI PICMG 2.16 and VME64x VITA 31.1 packet switched single board computers.

The FP 110/019 is an "unmanaged" embedded Ethernet switching platform that provides a low cost, low power, switching solution for telecoms OEMs and integrators.

Typically consuming less than 20 Watts, it offers twenty-four 10/100/1000Mbps auto-negotiating Ethernet ports, nineteen accessible via a PICMG 2.16 or a VITA 31.1 packet switched backplane.

The switch core contains a wire-speed, Layer 2, Quality of Service (QoS) switch fabric.

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

Extended temperature variants are also available.

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

Using the FP 110/019 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 exploiting 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.

PICMG 2.16 (or VITA 31.1) can also be used as a method of offloading tasks from the standard CompactPCI (or VME64x) backplane, thereby improving overall application efficiency.

The FP 110/019 enables up to nineteen computing node boards to interconnect in a chassis that supports a packet switched backplane (PICMG 2.16 or VITA 31).

A second FP 110/019 could be added to the chassis for redundancy or increasing the number of 10/100/1000Mbps ports.

Utilising the Marvell Prestera 98DX240 single chip Ethernet switch device, the FP 110/019 sustains full duplex full wire 10/100/1000Mbps speeds on all twenty-four ports.

Ports 1 to 19 are used for connection to the nodes on the packet switched backplane.

Port 20 is a board-to-board link to connect to a second FP 110/019 board for switch fabric redundancy or to increase the number of network nodes.

Ports 21 to 24 are via four RJ45 connectors on the front panel.

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

The switch can handle time-critical/multimedia traffic such as voice, video and data as it utilises four hardware priority queues per port and supports a range of QoS traffic classifications: port ID, MAC address, IEEE 802.1p, IEEE 802.1Q, IPv4 and IPv6.

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

For applications that require an embedded Ethernet switch in an industry standard chassis, the FP 110/019 provides a reliable low power switch.

Back to top