LTE-READY Integrated ATCA Platform

Date: 17/11/2009

Long Term Evolution (LTE) Ready Integrated ATCA Platform

Ismosys partner RadiSys® Corporation has collaborated with 6WIND Software (also an Ismosys partner) and Aricent in the development of an application-ready platforms for the Long Term Evolution (LTE) Evolved Packet Core (EPC).

The latest generation of RadiSys’ Promentum ATCA platform is a single fully-integrated solution that lowers development risk for Telecom Equipment Manufacturers (TEMs) and reduces time-to-market by as much as 18 months. A pre-packaged platform solution, the new platform combines RadiSys’ best-in-class ATCA hardware with 6WIND’s Datapath software (6WINDGate™) and Aricent’s LTE stack framework.

 “As the industry’s first 10G platform, RadiSys has now delivered more than 35 different applications for our customers,” said Anthony Ambrose, Vice President and General Manager, Communications Networks, RadiSys. “In order to provide TEMs looking to enter the LTE market with an even greater time-to-market advantage, we’ve partnered with Aricent and 6WIND to deliver the industry’s first LTE-ready platform that can reduce deployment time by 50 percent.”

6WIND Datapath, the company’s flagship software, creates a complete stack for packet processing and is ideally suited for LTE high performance equipment. It provides a complete L2-L4 packet processing engine based on Fast Path, a data plane specifically optimized to benefit from multicore performance: “6WINDGate’s Fast Path-based architecture delivers one of the best possible packet processing performances in the industry, delivering close to 30 Mpps forwarding performance on a RadiSys packet processing board based on a dual Cavium CN5860 OCTEON™ processor architecture,” said Eric Carmès, CEO of 6WIND. “We are pushing the 20G limit on a single ATCA board. Our off-the-shelf  optimizations enable tier one TEMs to focus their precious time and resources on getting to market quickly.”

Based upon the company’s mature and widely deployed DIAMETER and GTP product stacks Aricent’s LTE EPC software frameworks integrate the complete control plane (signaling) functionality of the EPC node into a seamless package, accelerating and simplifying development of highly scalable, carrier-class EPC solutions. These complete, pre-integrated control plane software modules are suitable for LTE Macro/Micro EPC nodes, supporting essential Serving Gateway, Packet Gateway and Mobility Management Entity capabilities. 

According to Ismosys MD Nigel Watts, RadiSys’ partnership with 6WIND and Aricent  brings together the benefits of scalability, high availability and ease of use along with the cutting-edge performance of one of the broadest portfolios of ATCA building blocks in the industry: “Data traffic and mobile video usage are growing at a rapid pace, and Service Providers are demanding quick delivery of next-generation networks to satisfy ever-increasing consumer demand”, Watts said. “Telecom Equipment Manufacturers (TEMs) are in turn seeking solutions such as the Radisys Promentum ATCA platform, which enables much shorter internal development cycles, to help them cope with the time-to-market pressures they’re facing”.

RadiSys has already leveraged the strengths of its ecosystem partners to provide a pre-integrated ATCA platform. RadiSys’ platform solutions use the latest processing technologies from Intel and Cavium Networks, Wind River’s Carrier Grade Linux operating system, and high availability middleware from Enea and GoAhead Software, along with Enea System Manager platform-management solution. “By adding the LTE expertise from 6WIND and Aricent  to this market-proven platform, RadiSys has been able to further reduce the risk for TEMs as they enter the LTE market”, Watts concluded