Mindspeed Technologies, Inc. (Mindspeed) has introduced a new family of single- or dual-core packet processors, Comcerto 1000 family. The Comcerto 1000 family targets a variety of voice and data communication equipment ranging from service provider triple-play broadband home gateways, small- and medium-sized business (SMB) smart security appliances, wireless enterprise access points (EAP) to voice over internet protocol (VoIP) products.
The new processors family is based on system-on-chip (SoC) multi-core architecture using ARM Holdings plc’s embedded processor technology and application specific hardware acceleration engines. The devices include a security engine capable of delivering scalable virtual private network (VPN) performance from 100 Mbps to full-duplex 1 Gbps symmetric Internet protocol security (IPSec) data rates.
The programmable quality of service (QoS) engines completely offload the central processing unit (CPU) from cycle intensive and time sensitive packet processing functions thus minimizing latency and reducing overall power consumption. The QoS engines features include per-port ingress congestion management, admission control, queuing, rate limiting, traffic shaping and scheduling. The Comcerto 1000 is capable of sustaining a short-packet gigabit line-rate denial-of-service (DoS) attack while guaranteeing the execution of mission critical applications.
Mindspeed’s companion software is built around a functionality partitioning across multiple cores. This solution includes an efficient fast packet forwarding package and a voice package. These modules are delivered as part of the complete Linux reference standard development kit (SDK) and are simple to integrate with customer applications. The new processors’ SDK is backward compatible with the Comcerto 100 series. In addition, the processors are supported by industry-standard application software and operating systems.
Our new Comcerto 1000 family of pin-compatible processors provides best-in-class performance, power and cost profile allowing customers to meet various product requirements across low-, mid- and high-end market ranges, said Marco Bello, director of marketing and product management of Mindspeed’s enterprise and customer premise equipment. Mindspeed’s mature software offering along with the reference hardware platform and the OpenMind(TM) ecosystem program combine to deliver quality turnkey solutions helping system designers to substantially shorten time-to-market and lower development costs for VPN/SSL SMB routers, broadband home gateways and enterprise access point manufacturers.
The Comcerto 1000 multi-core architecture with dedicated QoS hardware engines is valuable to service providers. The new devices enable the delivery of revenue-generating multimedia content such as IPTV and VoIP, while simultaneously providing large computing headroom capacity for future deployment of runtime services using the open services gateway initiative (OSGi) framework.
The new family of SoC devices leverages ARM’s energy efficient processor core technology to achieve low power consumption. Coupled with advanced power management modes and substantial packet processing capabilities, the Comcerto 1000 allows service providers to deploy next-generation fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) gateways incorporating new technologies such as 802.11n Wi-Fi and wideband digital enhanced cordless telecommunications (DECT) voice while minimizing the energy footprint.
The Comcerto 1000 is suitable to address low-cost and high-performance SMB VPN routers and unified threat management (UTM) products. The family of devices integrates a non-blocking security engine that frees the main CPU(s) from cryptographic, hashing and key generation functions. Consequently, the SoC is capable of delivering 2 Gbps of VPN/IPSec throughput with extremely low CPU load.
The Comcerto 1000 features and characteristics meet or exceed the requirements of vendors in the EAP market space. The processor family’s high-performance and low-power profile enables designers to address next generation EAP product challenges such as dual concurrent 802.11n and the resulting higher data rates, power over Ethernet (PoE) deployment, security, reliable voice and video distribution over wireless.
Technical Details
Comcerto 1000 leverages ARM’s energy efficient core technology and Mindspeed’s low-power design process to achieve the lowest power consumption in its class (2W typical at 650MHz). The companion board support package software provides a rich set of power management features to address the energy saving goals of service providers and product manufacturers worldwide.
Comcerto 1000 I/O interfaces in conjunction with Mindspeed’s multi-layer bus architecture allows non-blocking concurrent transactions across all data interfaces, thus minimizing on-chip packet processing latency. Moreover, the SoC data interfaces deliver a system bill of materials cost reduction by simplifying and minimizing PC board design requirements.
The Comcerto 1000 family provides customers a scalable solution of single- and multi-core processors with various speed ranges to address the specific needs of low-, medium- and high-end products. The SoC is based on the ARM11 core running at 450, 533 or 650MHz. The family incorporates a very high-speed, multi-layer bus architecture that allows six concurrent simultaneous direct memory access (DMA) operations thus substantially reducing congestion risk and optimizing packet transfers from an interface to another.
Moreover Comcerto 1000 integrates the latest peripherals, notably a USB2.0 PHY, two peripheral components interconnect express (PCIe) lanes, two gigabit Ethernet ports and a 4-port DDR2 controller with power management modes supporting memory speed grades up to DDR2-800. The PCI express interface allows OEMs to take advantage of the latest low-cost, small form-factor 802.11n Wi-Fi modules as well as providing easy, low-cost bridging to SATA enabled devices typically used in high-speed storage products.
The Comcerto 1000 OpenWRT Linux-based SDK is optimized for both single- and dual-core operation.
Mindspeed is a US-based supplier of semiconductor solutions for network infrastructure applications.