Related FPGAs
Related News
Webcasts
Get Started
xTCA Solutions
Actel xTCA reference designs and development kits drastically reduce risk, component count, and time-to-market. The Telecommunications Computing Architecture (xTCA) series of specifications, defined by the more than 250 members of the PCI Industrial Computer Manufacturers Group (PICMG®), includes AdvancedTCA® (ATCA), AdvancedMC™ (AMC), and MicroTCA®. These standard architectures reduce the cost of telecommunications, industrial, medical, and military equipment by establishing common physical, electrical, and functional specifications and ensuring interoperability. Manufacturers adopting these architectures are engaged in a transition similar to the replacement of the mini-computer by personal computers—a variety of custom electronic equipment will be replaced by modular, high-availability, low-cost ATCA or MicroTCA chassis and shelves.
Actel brings together the ground-breaking Fusion mixed-signal FPGA, world-class firmware and hardware platform management leadership from Pigeon Point Systems, an Actel Company, and the FPGA design expertise of Actel Protocol Design Services to provide a compelling solution for xTCA system management.
Actel provides highly integrated solutions for system management controllers in xTCA. Actel Fusion mixed-signal FPGA-based solutions are supported with reference designs, development kits, intellectual property (IP), software, and customization services, enabling reduced time-to-market, less risk, lower costs, and improved availability over existing solutions for these controllers.
An ATCA Shelf Manager manages an entire shelf or chassis and represents that shelf to the logical system manager. A local controller on each board or module in the shelf represents that element, monitors its health (including temperatures and voltages) and provides inventory data (such as serial number and product identifiers), among other advanced management facilities. The Pigeon Point local controller or Board Management Reference (BMR) solutions provide ready-to-use hardware and firmware, plus FPGA designs for Fusion-based variants.
AMC modules are the primary functional elements in MicroTCA systems, supported by switching, management, power, and cooling infrastructure elements. Like ATCA, MicroTCA defines shelf-level and local management controllers with similar roles and responsibilities. The Pigeon Point BMR solution family also provides ready-to-implement hardware platform management designs for these controllers.
Whether or not they are based on standards, complex electronic systems require management. The ATCA, AMC, and MicroTCA specifications define in detail the hardware platform management functions required for compliance, building on the Intelligent Platform Management Interface (IPMI) specification. Systems based on other architectures, such as the VME frameworks established by the VITA organization, also require system management implementations, as do systems built to proprietary platform architectures.
Non-xTCA development projects across this range of platform architectures successfully use the xTCA frameworks as a starting point and map the xTCA management paradigm to their specific requirements. Fusion mixed-signal FPGA devices are uniquely capable of supporting both proprietary and standards-compliant implementations in system management.
Actel Fusion mixed-signal FPGAs enable customers to optimize xTCA system management implementations, offering integrated on-chip analog resources, embedded flash memory, live-at-power-up functionality, and intrinsically low-power operation in a single-chip flash-based FPGA. This integration reduces overall system cost and board space requirements and provides the flexibility to support proprietary or standards-based system management. Fusion delivers significant advantages to system management designers: low-power operation, functionality that is robust and firm-error immune, high reliability, and enhanced system security.
Read more about Fusion Benefits.
Actel provides reference designs and design kits with hardware, software, and semiconductor intellectual property. Actel's xTCA solutions leverage Pigeon Point's system management expertise with Protocol Design Services' complementary skills and services to provide a full range of xTCA management solutions for the hardware platform management market.
- Pigeon Point Systems, an Actel Company, is the dominant supplier to leading companies worldwide of world-class management components for modular platforms based on the ATCA, AMC, and MicroTCA architectures.
- Actel Protocol Design Services provides customization services and support for semiconductor intellectual property. Protocol Design Services is directly involved in the development of Pigeon Point's BMR solutions based on Fusion mixed-signal FPGA devices, and can leverage that experience to provide customization services for BMR products.
Pigeon Point BMR Starter Kits, based on Actel's Fusion mixed-signal FPGAs, implement a complete hardware platform management solution that is expandable at the hardware level by adding custom logic into the FPGA. Pigeon Point BMR kits include proven, industry-dominant Pigeon Point firmware and ready-to-adapt board-level schematics, delivering together a robust development platform for your xTCA board design program.
Pigeon Point Systems Board Management Reference Starter Kits for AdvancedTCA
These Pigeon Point BMR Starter Kits implement a world-class solution for developing and fielding ATCA board or AMC carrier board designs with cost-effective, interoperable, and compliant management controllers. One of the kits uses an ARM®-enabled Fusion mixed-signal FPGA to implement a complete ATCA IPMC solution. The other kit provides the additional functionality required of an ATCA/AMC Carrier IPMC. These solutions include proven, industry-dominant firmware for both the ATCA board and AMC carrier board contexts, both running on a common bench top development board to deliver a robust development platform for your ATCA board design program.
By making use of the available on-board analog/digital resources, nonvolatile flash memory, and live-at-power-up FPGA fabric, these ATCA designs deliver reductions in overall bill-of-materials (BOM), total parts count, and cost compared to similar legacy solutions using discrete devices.
Actel and Pigeon Point Systems have also taken advantage of Fusion's built-in security features to reduce the cost of adopting the Pigeon Point solution. By locking the BMR kit design and firmware using either a P1AFS600 or P1AFS1500 Fusion mixed-signal FPGA device, Actel's on-chip security infrastructure eliminates the need for end customers to pay additional per-board royalties, adding to your per board savings.
Also included in the Pigeon Point Fusion Starter Kit BMR solution is the most advanced, widely available implementation of IPMI over LAN functionality for ATCA management controllers.
One application for IPMI over LAN supported by the BMR solutions is Serial over LAN (SoL), which can reduce operating expense in deployed ATCA shelves by eliminating the need to run serial cables to the console ports of CPU boards. An SoL approach to this serial traffic takes advantage of the fact that CPU boards are likely connected to an in-shelf LAN. Serial traffic is multiplexed on that LAN with other communication, simplifying configuration and operation, especially for large configurations that could have hundreds of shelves and thousands of boards. This multiplexing is accomplished in SoL-capable network controllers (NCs), which support a sideband interface to a management controller (an IPMC in the ATCA context) for SoL messages. The IPMC maintains the connection between the serial console port of the board CPU and a LAN-based client for the serial traffic via that sideband interface.
Another application for IPMI over LAN is firmware upgrades for the management controller; for large upgrade images, upgrades via LAN upgrades via LAN can be faster than those via the I2C-based IPMB interface.
In the Pigeon Point Fusion ATCA IPMC solutions, IPMI over LAN is supported both with traditional sideband interfaces based on I2C (which are network controller device- and vendor-dependent) and those based on the Network Controller Sideband Interface (NC-SI) specification, which is NC device- and vendor-independent. NC-SI-based IPMI over LAN is supported with the Pigeon Point Fusion BMR solutions on any NC-SI-compliant network controller and has been verified on two specific controllers—the Intel 82575 and Broadcom BMC5714C. The physical interface for NC-SI is the Reduced Media Independent Interface (RMII), which is available as an option in the Actel Core10/100 Ethernet MAC DirectCore, installed in a P1AFS1500 Fusion device for the NC-SI configurations. This is an example of the flexibility offered by an FPGA-based management controller; peripheral functions, even sophisticated ones like an Ethernet MAC, can be added to the management controller when needed.
With Pigeon Point's proven reference designs and firmware, the ARM 32-bit Cortex™-M1 processor, and the unique capabilities of Actel's Fusion mixed-signal flash FPGA, you gain a significant head start on your ATCA development effort when using the Fusion-based Pigeon Point BMR Starter Kit.
For more information on the Pigeon Point AdvancedTCA BMR Starter Kit, visit the Pigeon Point Systems website.
Pigeon Point Systems Board Management Reference Starter Kit for MicroTCA Carrier Hub Modules
The newest Pigeon Point reference design based on Actel's Fusion mixed-signal FPGA addresses the management subsystem of a MicroTCA Carrier Hub (MCH). This design takes advantage of the large capacity of the P1AFS1500 Fusion FPGA to integrate the bulk of the logic in this subsystem into the FPGA, dramatically reducing its bill-of-materials and footprint. In a BMR Fusion MCH design, Actel's Core10/100 DirectCore provides the necessary Ethernet connection, thirteen CoreI2C cores provide distinct logical IPMB-L instances for each AMC slot, and custom FPGA logic implements the hardware-level support for redundant MCH configurations. The provided FPGA design can be adapted and augmented to fit the needs of your MCH.
This Pigeon Point BMR solution covers all three aspects of an MCH management subsystem, including the overall Shelf Manager. All the corresponding firmware executes on an ARM Cortex-M1 processor core in the P1AFS1500 Fusion mixed-signal FPGA. Existing Pigeon Point BMR MCH management subsystem solutions are widely deployed in the MicroTCA market and have been intensively validated for compliance and interoperability, and the new Fusion-based BMR MCH management solution builds upon this maturity.
Like other BMR solutions, the Fusion-based MCH BMR includes a bench top board implementing the reference design (shown above), complete with a built-in AMC management block emulating a managed AMC. Available complementary bench top boards support connecting up to two physical Power Modules (PMs; PM-TSBR board shown below, left) and a physical AMC module (AMC-TSBR board shown below, right).
PM-TSBR Board
AMC-TSBR Board
With Pigeon Point's proven reference designs and firmware, the ARM 32-bit Cortex-M1 processor, and the unique capabilities of Actel's Fusion mixed-signal flash FPGA, you gain a significant head start on your MicroTCA Carrier Hub development effort when using this Fusion-based Pigeon Point BMR Starter Kit.
For more information on the Pigeon Point MicroTCA BMR Starter Kit, visit the Pigeon Point Systems website.
Fusion Single-Chip System Management
Actel, the world's only supplier of mixed-signal FPGAs, delivers a single chip that performs system management, as demonstrated in the xTCA reference designs described above. Actel Fusion integrates configurable analog, large flash memory blocks, comprehensive clock generation and management circuitry, and high-performance programmable logic in a single device. This level of integration and configurability establishes Fusion as the definitive system management solution.
Intellectual Property for ATCA, MicroTCA, IPMI, and Proprietary System Management
Actel IP cores support Actel silicon devices and can be used in xTCA and proprietary system management applications. These cores support baseboard and network management in IPMI.
