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December 2005
RTC News
RTC Group Announces Digital Delivery of Industry
Leading Magazines
RTC Magazine and COTS Journal Available via Download
The RTC Group has announced that subscribers can now
elect to receive its industry-leading magazines in digital,
downloadable PDF versions. Current subscribers can convert
their subscriptions to Digital Delivery by visiting
the magazines’ websites, www.rtcmagazine.com
and www.cotsjournalonline.com.
Conversions can take place immediately and Digital Delivery
will commence with the January 2006 issues. “We
want to ensure that our readers can receive our magazines
in the format that is most convenient for them,”
said John Reardon, President of The RTC Group. “Our
readership uses our magazines as research material to
be referenced time and again, so they are naturally
interested in searchable versions that can be archived
on their systems for easy retrieval.” Digital
Delivery subscribers will receive an email each month
with a link to the PDF version of the magazine. The
Digital Delivery versions will be exact copies of the
print magazines, including all the editorial, technical
articles, new product announcements and advertisements.
Embedded hyperlinks will allow easy connection from
articles, products and advertisements to more information
on the web.
Industry Updates
Semiconductor Industry Reaches Historic $235
Billion Level
Worldwide semiconductor revenue will total $235 billion
in 2005, a 6.9 percent increase from 2004, according
to preliminary results from Gartner. This will be the
first time that the semiconductor industry has surpassed
the previous record-setting year in 2000 when revenue
reached $223 billion. "Strong growth in the NAND
flash market was a recurring theme in the 2005 market
share rankings," said Andrew Norwood, research
vice president at Gartner. "The continuing strong
demand for flash card and USB flash drives in 2005,
along with the successful launch of the iPod shuffle
by Apple at the start of 2005 and the release later
in the year of the iPod nano, will drive this device
market to the highest revenue performance in 2005."
Gartner, www.gartner.com.
New Products
Opteron-Based ATCA Blade Reference Design Kit
Announced
Pinnacle Data Systems has announced development of an
AMD Opteron processor-based AdvancedTCA (ATCA) blade
reference design kit to meet the demands of the ATCA
specification for telecommunication equipment providers
(TEPs) and carriers. The intent of the ATCA reference
design is to provide a model that OEMs can quickly and
easily manufacture as is, modify themselves according
to customer needs, or contract with PDSi to modify and
complete a unique design with feature requirements provided
by the OEM or end customer. The development kit can
reduce time-to-market and development costs since the
intricacies of the system design according to the ATCA
specification have been researched and resolved. The
prototype blade reference is scheduled to be completed
by the end of Q1 2006 and generally available to the
public by the end of Q2 2006. This blade design offers
the telecommunications industry the flexibility and
durability of AdvancedTCA technology and allows telco
customers to quickly implement the benefits of true
dual core and 64-bit computing with the AMD Opteron
processor. PDSi, www.pinnacle.com.
SAS Storage Blade for Embedded Data/Telephony
Apps
SBE has announced a high-performance, fault-tolerant,
standards-based storage blade for embedded applications.
The HighWire Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) iBlade is designed
for applications requiring robust and cost-effective
storage solutions that leverage the features of both
iSCSI and SAS technologies on a single slot. SBE has
ported the PyX iSCSI stack onto its HW400c/2 core processing
platform and is bundling it with Astek's PMC-based SAS
host bus adapter to create a complete, fully-tested
storage transport solution ready to plug into any CompactPCI
networking and communications server or system. The
base platform of the SAS iBlade is an intelligent CompactPCI
I/O processor featuring a PowerPC processor, up to 1GB
SDRAM, two PCI Telecom Mezzanine Card (PTMC) sites,
dual Gigabit Packet Switched Backplane (PICMG 2.16),
front panel Gigabit Ethernet, and H.110. The PyX iSCSI
software is ported to this computing environment, which
ensures seamless data migration by employing a multi-channel
data transmission approach. The iSCSI technology, fully
compliant with the IETF RFC 3270 standard, enables an
enterprise-level IP storage platform that transports
data to and from networked storage with full error recovery
(ERL2), automatic load balancing, and multi-path capabilities
previously available only in Fibre Channel architectures.
Completing the blade is a PMC-based SAS daughterboard
from Astek that delivers up to eight 3-Gbps SAS/SATA
ports, integrated RAID (0, 1) and point-to-point connections
for increased aggregate bandwidth, higher availability,
and enhanced reliability. The blade supports up to two
SAS daughterboards to provide a total of 16 ports. SBE,
www.sbei.com.
PCI Express Bridge to Upgrade Industry Standard
Local-Bus Designs
PLX Technology has announced the PEX 8311, a bridging
device dedicated to upgrading standard processor, DSP,
and FPGA bus interface designs to PCIe. The PEX 8311
targets embedded designs spanning the video, imaging,
communications, and industrial-control markets. The
bridge provides an efficient conversion between a parallel,
low-overhead local bus and the serial, packet-based
PCIe interconnect, allowing users to add a scalable,
high-bandwidth interconnect to a wide variety of root
complex- or endpoint-based applications. The PEX 8311's
direct-memory-access (DMA) capability improves the performance
of these applications; the DMA offloads from the host
CPU the burdensome computational tasks required for
transferring data between the PCIe port and the CPU-independent
local bus standard used in many processor, DSP, and
FPGA designs. Such local bus designs allow glue-less
data connections between these devices and the PEX 8311.
Additionally, the PEX 8311 delivers features not found
in IP for programmable devices, such as two independent
data-transfer channels for simultaneous bidirectional
traffic, simultaneous Direct Master and Direct Slave
modes, four general-purpose I/Os to program/control
other system ICs, a read-ahead mode and zero-wait-state
bursts for high throughput, and integrated SerDes physical-layer
(PHY) interfaces that eliminate the need for a separate
PHY device. PLX Technology, www.plxtech.com.
Business Briefs
Chip Technology Breakthrough Uses New Materials
Intel Corporation today announced development of a new,
ultra-fast, yet very low power prototype transistor
using new materials that could form the basis of its
microprocessors and other logic products beginning in
the second half of the next decade. Intel and QinetiQ
researchers have jointly demonstrated an enhancement-mode
transistor using indium antimonide (chemical symbol:
InSb) to conduct electrical current. The prototype transistor
is much faster and consumes less power than previously
announced transistors. Intel anticipates using this
new material to complement silicon, further extending
Moore's Law. Significant power reduction at the transistor
level, accompanied by a substantial performance increase,
could play a crucial role in delivering future platforms
to computer users by allowing an increased number of
features and capabilities. Considerably less energy
used and heat generated could add significant battery
life for mobile devices and increase opportunities for
building smaller more powerful products. This is the
first time that enhancement mode transistors have been
demonstrated. Enhancement mode transistors are the predominant
type of transistor used in microprocessors and other
logic. These transistors are able to operate at a reduced
voltage, about 0.5 volts -- roughly half of that for
transistors in today's chips -- which leads to chips
that run cooler with far less power consumption. Intel,
www.intel.com.
Application-Ready ATCA Platform
Demonstrated
RadiSys and GoAhead Software recently demonstrated an
application-ready platform that features GoAhead's application-ready,
high availability platform, SelfReliant, running on
the RadiSys Promentum ATCA SYS-6000 -- a carrier grade
platform targeted at control and services plane applications.
This demonstration featured an internet protocol (IP)
multimedia subserver (IMS) application where voice calls
are made between two session initiation protocol (SIP)-enabled
phones, illustrating just one of many potential applications
that can benefit from such a platform. The companies
stressed that shortened development cycles are driving
telecom equipment manufacturers (TEMs) to take advantage
of an application-ready platform based on standards
such as ATCA and those published by the Service Availability
Forum (SA Forum). GoAhead www.goahead.com;
RadiSys, www.radisys.com.
Corrections
A news item in last month’s newsletter had
an incorrect headline. The corrected version is below;
we apologize for the error.
VxWorks Updates
Wind River Systems has announced comprehensive updates
to its entire line of commercial grade, real-time Wind
River VxWorks platforms. As part of Wind River's semi
annual product release model, the entire line of Wind
River VxWorks 6.2-based platform products are being
updated: Wind River General Purpose Platform, Platform
for Automotive Devices, Platform for Consumer Devices,
Platform for Industrial Devices, Platform for Network
Equipment and Platform for Safety Critical. The Wind
River VxWorks 6.2 platform now features enhancements
including end-to-end device security, system availability,
improved scalability, broader hardware coverage and
enhanced unit, integration and field testing via Wind
River's development suite. VxWorks 6.2 also delivers
device-specific configuration technology that enables
developers to save time and cost by building their device
software solutions with pre-built, pre-integrated components
and configurations best suited for the requirements
of their target device. Wind River, www.windriver.com.
Events
Real Time and Embedded Computing Conferences
www.rtecc.com
Copenhagen,
Denmark
January 26, 2006 
San
Jose, CA
January 26, 2006 
Barcelona,
Spain
February 21, 2006
Madrid,
Spain
February 23, 2006 
Melbourne,
FL
February 28, 2006
Register
for Upcoming RTECC shows
AFCEA West
San Diego , CA
January 10-12, 2006
Bus and
Board
Long Beach , CA
January 16-17, 2006
International
Service Availability Symposium ISAS 2006
Call for Papers
www.saforum.org/ISAS2006
Embedded
World 2006
Nürnberg ,
Germany
February 14-16, 2006 |
