Artesyn's new protocol engine based on Freescale controller

Artesyn Communication Products, a division of Artesyn Technologies, announced the Pm8560, a new octal E1/T1 ProcessorPMC protocol engine based on Freescale's PowerQUICC III mpc8560 communication controller.

Equipped with 512MB of SDRAM, 32MB of flash memory, and a 10/100/1000 Ethernet port, the new module is designed for protocol processing applications such as SS7/SIGTRAN signaling and ATM AAL-5.

According to the company, the Pm8560 gives telecom OEMs an easy way to add protocol processing and signaling capability to telecom systems equipped with PMC or PTMC (PCI Telephony Mezzanine Card) expansion slots, including Artesyn's own Katana AdvancedTCA and PICMG 2.16 (Compact PCI Packet Switching Backplane) blades. The Pm8560's high performance and versatile protocol support makes it suitable for a range of applications requiring multiple E1/T1/J1 interfaces for protocol and packet processing, including VoIP gateways, signaling gateways, base station controllers, radio network controllers and base transceiver stations.

"The MPC8560's high-performance PowerPC core and versatile communications processor make it an excellent protocol engine," commented Todd Wynia, VP of marketing at Artesyn. "The Pm8560's integrated MPC8560, multi-channel T1/E1 interface, Gigabit Ethernet packet interface, and convenient PrPMC form factor make it easy for telecom OEMs to take full advantage of the MPC8560 and add high-speed packet/protocol processing and signaling to a wide range of telecom systems."

The Pm8560's mezzanine interface is IEEE 1386.1 (PMC) compliant. It includes a subset of PICMG 2.15 PTMC Configuration 2 features. Additionally, the Pm8560's E1/T1 interfaces reside on a rear transition module installed on the baseboard. After processing the data and converting it to a packet format, the Pm8560 can send it back to the baseboard for additional processing or transmission over the backplane. It can also transmit the data directly to a packet network via its 10/100/1000 Gigabit Ethernet port. Operating system support for the Pm8560 includes MontaVista Carrier Grade Linux CGE3.1.

PowerQUICC III MPC8560

The PowerQUICC III MPC8560 from Freescale provides the compute and protocol engine for the Pm8560. Combining a PowerPC Book E e500 core with a multi-channel Communications Processor Module (CPM), this device operates at 800MHz, features a single-precision floating point unit with SIMD capability, and delivers a peak performance of up to 1,850MIPS. This RISC-based CPM features three fast serial communications controllers (FCCs), two multichannel controllers (MCCs), four serial communications controllers (SCCs), one serial peripheral interface (SPI) and an I?C interface. The MPC8560 also includes a 64-bit PCI/X/PCI controller, RapidIO port, and a pair of 10/100/1000 Ethernet controllers.

The Pm8560 sells in OEM quantities for $ 1,497.