ATCA Now & Next. Rob Pettigrew, Marketing Director Embedded Computing Emerson Network Power Emerson.com/EmbeddedComputing.

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1 ATCA Now & Next Rob Pettigrew, Marketing Director Embedded Computing Emerson Network Power Emerson.com/EmbeddedComputing July 2013 The Advanced Telecom Computing Architecture (AdvancedTCA or ATCA ) is a series of open standard computing platform specifications originally ratified in 2002 to meet the needs of carrier grade communications equipment, primarily for core network telecommunications applications. In the 11 years since ATCA products first appeared on the market, there have been numerous advances in the governing standard, the products available, and the products and applications which are driving its adoption and growth. This white paper provides an overview of the current state-of-the-art in ATCA, discussing where it s being deployed, what kinds of applications and technologies are driving its growth, its relevance in the context of all-ip cloud deployments, and what the future may hold for the standard products and adoption. The paper assumes a basic understanding of AdvancedTCA. An introduction to the technology is provided in the Emerson Network Power white paper, What is ATCA?

2 The recent ratification of the latest release of the AdvancedTCA (ATCA ) specification by the PCI Industrial Computers Manufacturers Group (PICMG ) opens the door to new discussions on the current state and future direction of ATCA technology. PICMG3.1R2 ratifies what has become known in the industry as 40G ATCA, which is the addition of up to 4x10G (10GBase-KR) and 40GigE (40G- BaseKR4) per Ethernet Fabric Channel to the widely deployed 4x1GigE (1000Base-KX) and 10GigE (10GBase-KX4) options. AdvancedTCA products are available from a large ecosystem of vendors, providing products such as chassis, shelf managers, hub switch blades, payload blades and full systems. Chassis range in capacity from small 2-slot systems (which generally connect two payload blades together without hub switches), up to 6-slot and 14-slot systems. Switch blades provide the inter-board connectivity and typically implement both the 1GigE Base Network and the Fabric Network, typically with either 10GigE or 40GigE connectivity between each blade. Payload blades are available with various processor technologies. The most commonly deployed payload blades are high performance Intel Xeon processor blades, used traditionally for control plane applications, but increasingly used in the packet data path. However, one of the biggest differentiators between ATCA systems and other bladed computing systems is the availability of payload blades with technologies other than Intel Xeon. These include media processing blades with digital signal processors (DSP) from companies such as Texas Instruments and Octasic, and packet processing blades with specialized network processors such as the Cavium OCTEON II. Figure 1: A wide range of ATCA products are available from an ecosystem of many vendors The combination of high availability architecture, I/O and backplane bandwidth, and a choice of available technologies have made ATCA systems particularly well-suited for a large set of telecommunications network applications. These include 2G/3G/4G Radio Access Network control elements such as Base Station Controllers (BSC), Radio Network Controllers (RNC), and LTE Mobility Management Entity (MME); and Core Network elements such as Mobile Switch Center (MSC), Home Location Register (HLR), Media Gateway and Session Border Controller (SBC). ATCA systems have also been deployed for data path elements including 2G/3G SGSN and GGSN elements, and LTE packet gateways. Today's Drivers The unprecedented explosion in network traffic, fueled by smart mobile devices and online content such as streaming video, has created new levels of stress for existing telecommunications networks. Carriers have been forced to react by expanding their network capacity. The fundamental problem facing these carriers, however, is that their revenue is not growing at the same rate. In general, the Average Revenue per User (ARPU) is fairly flat, meaning that, in order to remain profitable, carriers must look for P2

3 innovative ways to manage their networks other than by simply scaling their existing infrastructure. ATCA systems are particularly well suited to be used as a platform for such innovative new applications because they uniquely combine the following features: High bandwidth fabrics (40G Ethernet) High performance payload blades optimized for packet processing applications rather than traditional server applications High capacity digital signal processing blades for voice and video optimization DPI enables a range of network services including network optimization, flow inspection, data flow management, security and application monitoring. These services may be called many things - such as user experience optimization, policy definition and enforcement, quality of service, tiered services or lawful intercept, but can be fundamentally grouped into classes of applications with similar requirements. Two particular areas of focus are network intelligence applications with deep packet inspection (DPI) and mobile data optimization. Network Intelligence In order to remain competitive and profitable, telecommunications carriers cannot be restricted to simply delivering packets over a dumb pipe network. Rather, carriers are looking to introduce systems that gather intelligence regarding the specific nature of the traffic carried by their networks. This intelligence allows carriers to make decisions about delivering that data more efficiently and allows them to provide differentiated service offerings that improve the experience of users. Network intelligence applications generally require DPI. In a traditional IP network, network equipment only looks at a packet header, which includes information required to route a packet from the source to the destination. No specific attention is paid to the content of the packet. With DPI, the equipment looks much deeper into the packet, separating the traffic into flows. Each flow represents the packets sent from the source to the destination for a particular session and can be further classified by protocol and specific application, often with intermediate tunnels that may or may not be encrypted. Figure 2: Fundamental requirements of network intelligence applications Network intelligence applications are a strong driver for ATCA product innovations today, including driving the introduction of 40G Ethernet fabrics, with associated payload blades based on either traditional packet processors such as the Cavium Octeon II or increasingly, Intel Xeon processors. System software required by such applications include load balancing software that distributes flows evenly across processor arrays, fast path packet processing software and higher level software stacks for packet filtering and DPI. Voice and Video Network intelligence systems help carriers measure and optimize their networks, and identify specific packet flows. Once identified, there is an opportunity to manipulate those flows to optimize content delivery. Video traffic represents a large percentage of network traffic growth and there is a class of P3

4 network systems that must manipulate that data in the network to either accommodate different end user devices, or to mix the video streams for applications such as video conferencing or targeted advertising insertion. Voice traffic is also traditionally manipulated in the network. Various standards exist to encode voice traffic, based on various requirements for bit rate, latency and quality. At the border between voice networks, in elements such as session border controllers (SBCs) and media gateways, these voice streams are typically transcoded between these different codecs using specialized hardware employing DSPs. reliable, high performance systems, which are designed to cope with operating environments that are typically harsher than the traditional IT data center. Data transmission, packet processing and high performance computing are becoming ever more important functions in military, aerospace and security equipment. This is driving defense and aerospace contractors to examine whether ATCA can be adopted successfully into the tough conditions experienced by soldiers, pilots and sailors. ATCA meets the US Department of Defense (DoD) mandate for a modular open system approach (MOSA), commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) and reduced size, weight, power and cost (SWaP-C) based solutions. Figure 3: Typical network architecture showing elements such as session border controllers and media gateways The need for in-network voice and video transcode functions is another strong driver for ATCA systems due to the availability of specialized DSP blades, employing technologies from companies such as Texas Instruments and Octasic. Beyond Telecom Although conceived and developed for the telecommunications market, ATCA systems are beginning to gain acceptance in adjacent markets. The largest of these markets are military, aerospace and security. Figure 4: Caption: Tests by Northrop Grumman demonstrated that ATCA equipment is able to survive afloat shock testing (commonly called "barge testing"), showing its suitability for deployment as shipboard systems. MIL-S-901D Heavyweight Shock Test Photographs courtesy of National Technical Systems in Rustburg, VA. For more information on the suitability and adoption of ATCA technology for military, aerospace and security applications, download the Emerson Network Power white paper, ATCA for Military, Aerospace and Other High Performance Embedded Computing Users. All share common requirements for highly P4

5 ATCA for the Cloud The telecom industry loves to talk about the efficiencies and savings that can be gained by moving services to 'the cloud'. But when people talk about the cloud, they are generally speaking in terms of moving functions somewhere where the responsibility of service delivery becomes somebody else s problem. The typical view of this cloud is a large array of very inexpensive homogenous servers, with general purpose server processors and no application acceleration. Individual nodes would not be highly available. Rather, service availability comes from a very large array of unreliable elements, managed by very smart software. In such a model, is there room for ATCA systems? Workload Consolidation Traditional network systems can be divided into four primary classes or workloads: Historically, each workload has been deployed on specialized hardware. A fundamental requirement of moving workloads to the cloud is to consolidate them on common general purpose hardware. Intel has coined the phrase, workload consolidation. In the context of traditional telecommunications equipment, there are very strong development and operational efficiencies of such consolidation. R&D teams can develop on common hardware with common development tools. No specialized processor knowledge would be required. Systems can be deployed with common payload blades, simplifying maintenance procedures and sparing requirements for the carrier. In addition, the architecture of telecom systems themselves can be optimized with such consolidation. Traditionally, system control and data path elements must be partitioned and deployed in fixed ratios. Workload consolidation allows system elements to be dynamically configured between control and data functions, increasing the capacity of the system to react to changing workloads and utilize system payload much more efficiently. So what progress is being made? Application delivery and network control plane functions have long been the domain of traditional Intel processors. So progress in workload consolidation has been focused on penetrating the network data path or packet processing and media processing workloads. Network Data Path Packet processing is traditionally the domain of specialized processors that combine many processing cores with packet processing functional blocks that offload packet processing functions with specialized hardware. In order to penetrate this market with general purpose CPUs, Intel has focused on developing a software data path. The Data Path Developers Kit (DPDK) is a set of software utilities that provide this path. While performance certainly varies by application, early feedback from developers is that Intel architecture, with DPDK software, provides a very compelling packet processing platform that rivals that available from specialized processors. P5

6 While early feedback is that for some applications, such as HD video transcode, this platform achieves results that rival traditional DSPs, the GPU unit is not present on standard Intel Xeon processors. So platforms optimized for media processing on Intel Architecture consist of arrays of desktop processors with GPUs, which are generally speaking specialized platforms themselves. Is There Room for ATCA in the Cloud? When people talk about moving applications and workloads to the cloud they assume that there are nodes in the cloud - that they don t need to worry about - that will provide 100% reliability and all they have to do is write software that lives in a virtual machine. That ignores entirely the infrastructure to host these virtual machines. So fundamental questions are: What are the reliability requirements of these virtualized applications? What is the cost of an outage? These questions are often conveniently ignored. Figure 5: Intel DPDK is a set of libraries and drivers for fast packet processing on x86 platforms Media Processing That leaves a fourth workload: media processing. Like packet processing, Intel s focus on penetrating this workload has been to focus on application specific software. The Media Software Developer s Kit (MSDK) is intended to do for voice and video processing what DPDK does for packet processing to accelerate the performance of general purpose Intel silicon for media processing functions. However, unlike the DPDK, the MSDK uses the graphics processing unit (GPU) available on some Intel processors, rather than the general purpose Intel processing cores. Currently deployed IT virtualization software does not deliver the platform reliability required by telecommunication services. So, the big question for the industry is whether there will continue to be a market for platforms with traditional telecom availability and reliability, which are designed to host these new virtual functions. This opens the door to telecom-specific virtualization platforms, designed and standardized to run network functions. An industry initiative called Network Function Virtualization is underway with the goal of standardizing these platform software interfaces with telecom-reliable management services. P6

7 Figure 6: There is a place for the reliability and performance enabled by ATCA within the drive towards network function virtualization A second consideration is the performance that can be achieved on general purpose hardware versus what can be achieved with application specific hardware. A wise man once told me that you cannot virtualize hardware. There will always be opportunities to optimize hardware platforms to accelerate performance to improve capacity, power efficiency and cost of acquisition and ownership. This application acceleration may take several forms, including specialized ATCA blades or blades using general purpose processors that have been optimized for specific applications. Today s 40G Intel architecture ATCA blades incorporate high performance I/O, memory and acceleration offload features that are simply not available on standard servers. The same can be said for media processing blades using clusters of desktop processors with GPUs for media processors. Neither can really be called traditional cloud elements. So the future of ATCA may be 'cloudy', but the need for telecom-specific platforms with features such as high availability, high bandwidth fabrics and application-specific acceleration will ensure that demand for such open standards based platforms remains strong for many years to come. What s next for ATCA? P7

8 Future investment in ATCA will likely be focused in two areas: More power and cooling Higher bandwidth fabrics The ATCA standard was originally conceived to accommodate payload blades that nominally consume up to 200W of input power and are cooled by approximately 40 CFM of airflow per slot. However, new technologies have resulted in blades that have pushed through that envelope and the standard is being accordingly evolved to approximately double those numbers. This should result in enough power and system airflow to accommodate several technology insertion cycles. For the ATCA fabric, a logical next step would be the evolution of the current 40G Ethernet fabric to 100G. For more information on Emerson s ATCA solutions, please contact your local Embedded Computing sales office. Worldwide HQ Tempe, AZ U.S.A or Global Offices EMEA Munich, Germany Paris, France Tel Aviv, Israel Hong Kong Seoul, Korea Shanghai, China Tokyo, Japan Emerson.com/EmbeddedComputing This step will require first the standardization of 100G Ethernet over a copper backplane by the IEEE, followed by the adoption of a 100G backplane standard by PICMG for ATCA. Such work is currently underway and will most likely be completed within a few years. Demand for ATCA systems is strong and is expected to continue to grow. Within the telecommunications market, demand for network intelligence and mobile data optimization services will drive demand for open standards based systems with high performance fabrics and application-specific acceleration. Outside the traditional telecommunications market, relevance and demand is growing in markets such as military and aerospace. And the industry is responding with new products and advances in the standard. For ATCA, the future is very exciting. P8

9 About Emerson Network Power Emerson Network Power is a business of Emerson (NYSE:EMR) and, through its Embedded Computing & Power business, is the trusted partner for scalable embedded computing technology and power supplies for the aerospace, defense, computing, healthcare, industrial and telecom markets. The Embedded Computing business of Emerson Network Power enables original equipment manufacturers and systems integrators to develop better products quickly, cost effectively and with less risk. Emerson is a recognized leading provider of embedded computing solutions ranging from application-ready platforms, embedded computers, enclosures, motherboards, blades and modules to enabling software and professional services. Offices Tempe, AZ U.S.A or EMEA Munich, Germany Paris, France Tel Aviv, Israel Hong Kong Seoul, Korea Shanghai, China Tokyo, Japan Emerson.com/EmbeddedComputing Emerson s engineering and technical support is backed by world-class manufacturing that can significantly reduce time-to-market and help OEMs gain a clear competitive edge. Let Emerson help your business improve time-to-market and shift development efforts to the deployment of new, value-add features and services that build market share. Emerson, Emerson. Consider It Solved, Emerson Network Power, Centellis, and FlowPilot are trademarks of Emerson Electric Co. or one of its affiliated companies. AdvancedTCA and ATCA are registered trademarks of the PCI Industrial Computer Manufacturers Group. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners Emerson Electric Co. While every precaution has been taken to ensure accuracy and completeness in this literature, Emerson Network Power assumes no responsibility, and disclaims all liability for damages resulting from use of this information or for any errors or omissions. ATCA Now and Next white paper R1D0 Emerson Network Power. EmersonNetworkPower.com