Sun Intros New 10G ATCA Solutions

New ATCA-based gear introduced Tuesday by Sun Microsystems Inc. under its popular Netra line delivers high-capacity performance using general-purpose processing, which will enable service providers to realize significant capex and opex savings due to “massive consolidation” of their server resources, according to the company.

The Sun Netra CT900 Multithreaded 10G ATCA Portfolio, based on the Solaris 10 operating system, gives telcos using gear based on the solution the ability to connect high-performance multi-core/multithreaded processors directly into 10gbps networks.

Dave Berry, Sun’s senior product marketing manager, said the load from video traffic, and just the increasing number of subscribers on public networks, means service providers are seeing the need to aggregate 1GB connections into 10GB pipes, and use standards-based computing devices to do so.

Introduced at the Mobile Asia Congress (formerly 3GSM), the new Netra solutions include the Sun Netra CP3260 ATCA blade server, which employs UltraSPARC T2 processors; the Sun Netra CP3220 ATCA blade server, using AMD Opteron processors; and the Sun Netra CP3240 10GbE ATCA switch.

Additionally, the company unveiled the Sun Unified Network Platform (SUN-P).

Several ISVs are developing applications for the Netra ATCA blade portfolio and SUN-P, including Aricent, Go Ahead, OpenClovis and WindRiver.

Mark Butler, Netra systems product line director, said the new solutions can handle high-speed traffic in both wireless and fixed networks. He added that in the past equipment providers used general-purpose processors for control in the network; and specialty hardware and software, in the form of ASICs or network processors, to handle applications traffic at line rate. Of course, developing specialty gear entails a longer development cycle and is more costly, he said, so using general purpose processors is preferable. Sun calls its approach in this realm telco virtualization, which Butler said takes advantage of chip multithreading. The on-board network processing in its solutions have logical domains, so different groups of threads do different jobs – allowing a single chip to perform both general and specialized functions.

In addition to the savings service providers can realize from this virtualization due to consolidation of functions, Berry added that they and their turnkey equipment suppliers get a “viable supply chain” because many of the companies that have been in the business of developing ASICs and network processors (a process that typically takes at least two years and between $2 million and $5 million per project) have either gone out of business or discontinued that part of their businesses.

"The Sun servers and solutions we are announcing today add immense value to Sun's Netra line-up, which has already seen six consecutive quarters of double-digit growth," said Butler. "All 10 of the top [network equipment providers, or NEPs], in addition to 48 of the 50 largest service providers, are deploying Sun Netra systems. Now our expanded Netra ATCA portfolio and the Sun Unified Network Platform can enable NEPs and service providers to increase ROI, lower the cost per subscriber, and lower deployment cost."

Sun Microsystems Inc. www.sun.com

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