Third Generation Intel Core i7 combines with Serial RapidIO on AMC boards
Concurrent Technologies released and demonstrated the latest additions to their MicroTCA product family – the
latest AMC processor boards featuring either dual or quad core third Generation Intel Core i7 processors based on
22nm process technology combined with IDT’s Tsi721 PCIe to RapidIO bridge to provide a highly efficient
interface to a Serial RapidIO (SRIO) backplane. Additionally, support for SRIO has been added to the
previously released Fabric Interconnect Networking Software (FIN-S), which provides standardized uniform APIs
across a fabric interconnect. The result is a high bandwidth and low latency solution that utilizes about 5% of the
CPU’s bandwidth and provides a realistic opportunity for users of PowerPC/SRIO products to transfer to Intel
processor technology. Applications for this hardware and software solution are expected within both the telecom
and defence markets, especially where a large number of computing nodes are required to intercommunicate at
high data rates.
Depending upon I/O requirements, system designers have a choice of two high performance processor boards –
the AM 93x/x1x or the AM 94x/x1x. Users can take advantage of the boards’ processing power, high performance
backplane fabric connectivity and the peer-to-peer networking performance of SRIO to develop large
multiprocessing systems. These processor boards are particularly well suited for MicroTCA-based
telecommunication applications such as IPTV, digital media servers, media gateways, broadband, Long Term
Evolution (LTE) or LTE-Advanced, wireless base stations as well as in test systems for wireline and wireless
networks.
All variants of AM 93x/x1x and AM 94x/x1x support Fabric Interconnect Networking Software (FIN-S) which
provides high performance Ethernet emulation over SRIO along with other application level interfaces. FIN-S
enables plug and play of any TCP/IP based application across the SRIO fabric, thereby reducing the development
effort and time to market for the user by providing a very high degree of application portability and reusability.
The main features and benefits of using FIN-S on SRIO include more than 60% practical application level
bandwidth when compared to 10 GigE as well as more than double the performance with half the CPU utilization
compared to open source SRIO Ethernet emulation solutions. TCP/IP Application level bandwidth of more than
1.8 Gbytes/s is achieved with Gen 2 SRIO 5 Gbaud/s x4 links. This solution also boasts “jitterless” TCP/IP packet
latencies of less than 10 micro seconds.
Concurrent Technologies, Woburn, MA. (781) 933-5900. [www.gocct.com]