by: Performance Technologies

Performance Technologies’ IPnexus® AMP5071 Application-Ready MicroTCA® System

Decision, decisions, decisions! A new project is underway, the basic requirements have been defined, yet one critical choice has still to be answered: “What design approach should you use: proprietary, COTS, or Application-Ready?”

Total Cost of Ownership (TCO)

Engineering Managers, Product Managers, and Project Managers are increasingly focusing on TCO and asking questions such as: “how can I get to market faster,” “how can I develop the new product with fewer resources and less cost,” and “what’s the best solution not only for the short term, but for the long term?”

Looking at Proprietary Designs through the TCO Microscope

The expectation with proprietary architectures is that it will be designed exactly to the product’s requirements with an intimate knowledge of the architecture, and that material costs for hardware, integration, and software will ultimately be lower, provided the volume is significantly high enough. Yet, there is the potential for numerous hidden or other costs that may not be accounted for, or that show up later in the development cycle. These include, but are not limited to: low volume rate where sales don’t match projections, unforeseen issues that could delay time-to-market, as well as low potential for product re-use.

Looking at Commercial-Off-The-Shelf (COTS) Designs through the TCO Microscope

With all the variable costs associated with proprietary designs, many companies are developing with standards-based, off-the-shelf products from multiple vendors. Standards-based building blocks have become technically stable over the years, with standards such as VME, CompactPCI^®, AdvancedTCA^® (ATCA), and now, MicroTCA^®. The benefits are numerous including the outsourcing of basic components, reduced time-to-market, re-use of standardized components for future products, reduced development costs, and lifecycle and supply chain managed by third-party sources, to name a few.

Yet, here too, there are hidden costs to account for that could impact your release timeframe, your budget, and potentially delay final product release. Most critical of these factors include multi-vendor hardware integration, software/hardware integration, and then OS integration and configuration.

Figure 1: Cost and Time Estimates for Proprietary, COTS, and Application-Ready Systems

Application-Ready Systems

Application-Ready Systems can significantly reduce develop-ment expenses and further shorten time-to-market schedules compared to both proprietary systems and COTS, resulting in true cost savings in development and even faster time-to-market. There are many definitions for Application-Ready Systems, but the truest characterization is that these systems integrate all the hardware and software components such that it is truly “complete” and ready to operate an application right “out-of-the-box.” So a complete, Application-Ready system is one that integrates the COTS-based chassis, platform management, switching, payload modules, operating system, middleware, API, drivers, and an application development environment.

For example, Performance Technologies has developed several Application-Ready MicroTCA® systems consisting of the plat-forms, tightly integrated compute/storage/IO modules, and its pre-integrated Carrier Grade Linux® 4.0 OS, NexusWare®. Thus, OS porting, integration (including resolving compatibility issues), and configuration are already compatible and functional directly out-of-the-box.

The calendar time saved with an Application-Ready System is mea-sured in months, but if several engineers and supporting people are on the project, it could easily be over 12 person-months of time saved. In addition, think about the time-to-market opportunity gained: your finished products are out sooner and your sales team is out selling months ahead of schedule, beating your competition. Let’s look closer at the cost savings. As an example, for just the conceptual product architecture design alone, if three engineers were assigned to develop a proprietary architecture, that’s a development cost of $650,000, if each engineer costs $200K in fully burdened salary and benefits expenses per annum. Next, add in the customization and design of the components and housing as these create additional expenses before you even begin your true, product development. Application-Ready Systems’ modular architecture allows flexibility for numerous applications and for growth, scalability, and performance enhancements for the future applications.

MicroTCA® Considerations

All MicroTCA platforms include overhead to support each AMC module, so unused ports (like empty seats on an airplane) cost money. These overhead costs include power, cooling, Ethernet switch ports, PCI Express® ports, or platform management infra-structure. However, research indicates that many applications best suited for MicroTCA require only three to six AMC slots. For applications that require more payload, scaling is as easy as adding another system.

Figure 2: Screen capture of nexusWare Portal – a web-based management and development tool for MicroTCA® Application Ready Systems

MicroTCA has gone through two major architectural generations. The first generation platforms were introduced in 2006-2007 and were designed with modular MicroTCA Carrier Hub (MCH) modules and MTCA-based power supplies. The MCH supports the fabric switching, platform management, and Telco clock distribution. While this helped to get units to market early, the costs were relatively high. In addition, the original designs for these chassis were bulky and took up consider-able rack space.

Figure 3: In an Application-Ready System, all the extensive work of developing, testing, and pre-integration between OS, middleware and hardware is complete.

Second generation MicroTCA systems, like the Performance Technologies IPnexus® AMP5070 and AMP5071, were introduced in 2008 and 2009, respectively. These low-profile 1U systems integrate the MCH functions on to a motherboard and utilize low-cost, enterprise-class power supplies. Further, the industry-leading, 1U systems are still fully MicroTCA.0 compliant and are much more cost-effective than a larger platform with additional slots that are not necessarily needed for all applications. The IPnexus Application-Ready Systems come complete with fully integrated AMC processor modules such as the Intel® EP80579 or Core™ 2 Duo Processor, NexusWare® Linux® Operating System, and NexusWare Portal – a remote management tool.These economic times require us to look at projects more holistically, more methodically, and to consider all the TCO costs, both obvious and hidden. With more “out-of-the-box” thinking, there are ways to navigate through the profitability vs. performance dilemmas to create great new products. For more information, visit http://go.pt.com/mtca1 for a MicroTCA Webinar and White Papers.

This entry was posted on Monday, July 6th, 2009 at 5:04 pm and is filed under Article.