Kontron success comes in small packets

At Mobile World Congress, Kontron showcases its AdvancedMC™ packet processor IO modules – the Kontron AM42xx Intelligent IO series that are available now for full production orders. The Kontron modules are an integral portion of a live signaling and IPSec MicroTCA™ carrier grade gateway demonstration in collaboration with Adax at the Kontron Booth, 2.1, B14.

“After only 6 months on the market, the Kontron AM42xx modules have attracted higher than expected attention among equipment vendors looking for next generation multi-core packet processing at competitive pricepoints on a COTS platform,” said Marc Leclaire, Kontron AdvancedTCA^®/AdvancedMC™ product manager. “We have a very healthy sales funnel right now with a number of new and soon to be finalized design wins. These highly versatile modules are ideal for a wide range of applications, from IMS Media Gateways to IP monitoring services.”

The Kontron AM42xx AdvancedMC™ modules have two key advantages – one, they offer outstanding performance: Based on the OCTEON Plus CN5650 packet processors with 12 x 64bit MIPS cores the Kontron AM42xx modules boast up to 14.4 billion MIPS64 instructions per second (14.4 GOPS) and are optimized for layer 4 to layer 7 data and security processing. Two, each module offers incredible cost savings. This is because each OCTEON Plus processor has integrated PCIe and XAUI bridges, thus saving the cost of two external bridge chips on the AdvancedMC™ module. Each processor additionally enables 10GbE direct to the processor.

Besides the fact that the Cavium-based multi-core architecture is ideal for packet processing applications, the Kontron AM42xx AdvancedMC™ modules can be used for Carrier Grade Linux distributions with built-in ‘control’ plane functions on one of the 12 cores, with data plane functions handled by the remaining cores.

As the Kontron AM42xx modules gain more traction and demand with AdvancedTCA™ and MicroTCA™ platform designs, more developers are recognizing the use and reuse of this AdvancedMC™ with its versatile I/O capability and support for Linux with dual 10GbE support.

Kontron offers two Kontron AM42xx models: the Kontron AM4220 with 2x 10GbE to the front and PCIe to the fabric side; and the Kontron AM4204 with 4x 1GbE ports to the front and software configurable interfaces to the fabric side (PCIe, 4x 1GbE or XAUI).

More about the Adax-Kontron demo:
Among the different configurations, the Kontron OM5080 MicroTCA™ platform is being used as a signaling and IPSec gateway, namely:

Adax’s HDC-TDM and ATM-TDM SS7-to-M3UA using the Adax HDC3 AMC
ATM-OC3 SS7-to-M3UA using the Adax ATM4 AMC
ATM-IP interworking using the Adax ATM4 AMC
And, an IPSec security gateway – for encryption & authentication – using Kontron AM4010 processor AMC modules and the Kontron AM4204 NPU AMC module.

The combined platform solution is ideal for telecom equipment manufacturers (TEMs) who build edge and access applications, radio network controllers (RNCs) and mobile switching centers (MSCs) who need to design redundant systems without any single point of failure.

Applicable applications for the Kontron AM42xx Intelligent IO series