ACULAB

The Aculab (Panama City, FL -- 850-763-9281, www.aculab.com) product line covers digital T1/E1/SS7 network access cPCI boards as well as Prosody DSP platforms for high-density speech processing. A single Aculab Prosody card, occupying a single slot, can deliver 256 channels of DSP voice processing and supports up to 120 E1/T1 links (such as to an Aculab E1/T1 board), in a "hot-swap" environment.

A single Aculab T1/E1 card can handle up to 247 speech channels (about eight E1 trunks). It combines both E1 and T1 interfaces and any mix of ISDN or CAS protocols. This is because the card, based on Aculab's "one processor per interface" architecture, allows any protocol to be used independently on each network interface. Onboard DSPs are used to handle signaling in tone-based networks, while in non-tone-based signaling applications, these DSPs can perform some functions appropriate to a line card. Each function is written in a free downloadable algorithm that runs on a per-DSP basis.

Aculab's offers a generic, cross-platform API that allows developers to quickly integrate Prosody cPCI technology into their applications involving fax, connected word speech recognition, text-to-speech, record and playback with a range of compressions, matrix conferencing, echo cancellation, DTMF tone detection, and data transmission protocols.

A mix of E1/T1 and Prosody cPCI cards can be combined for applications demanding DSP resources (such as record, playback, and echo cancellation) to deliver sophisticated convergence solutions.

ADVANTECH

The CT and Network Computing Division of Advantech Technologies Inc. (Carlsbad, CA -- 760-918-9288, www.advantech.com) recently brought forth the CompactPCI single board computer, the MIC-3377/M. It's a 6U-high, one-slot-wide package that accepts an 850 MHz Pentium III (256 KB L2 cache) or 733 MHz Celeron (128 KB L2 cache). The MIC-3377/M uses an Intel 440BX chipset that delivers a Front Side Bus (FSB) bandwidth of 100 MHz.

Two 144-pin SO-DIMM sockets support up to 512 MB SDRAM with Error Correction (ECC). Also, dual Intel 82559 Fast Ethernet controllers provide redundant Ethernet ports and team functions such as Adapter Fault Tolerance, Adaptive Load Balancing, and Fast EtherChannel.

All of the MIC-3377/M's I/O connectors are on the front panel, including two serial ports, one USB ports, and one PS/2 keyboard/mouse connector. The built-in high-speed PCI IDE controller provides two separate IDE channels with Ultra DMA/33 mode. The user-defined J3 connector supports up to four IDE devices and two floppy disk drives devices. Interestingly, a fan-less heat sink cools the board, so adequate ventilation is attained with external cooling air from the chassis fans, making the board quite slim.

Two versions of this CPU board are available: MIC-3377/M and MIC-3377D/M. The MIC-3377/M has a single PCI-to-PCI bridge that can handle up to eight-slot enclosures (MIC-3032/MIC-3021/MIC-3033) and drives up to seven cPCI slots, while the MIC-3377D/M with optional dual PCI-to-PCI bridges is applicable up to a 14-slot enclosure (MIC-3031) and drives up to 14 CompactPCI slots. Optional rear transitionboards (the MIC-3301 and MIC-3302) can connect all the inputs and outputs on the rear panel. It is recommended to select the MIC-3302 or MIC-3302F for the MIC-3377/M's rear connection, and the MIC-3301 for the MIC-3377D/M's.

Pricing starts at $1,800. OEM and volume discounts are available.

One of Advantech's most powerful new CPU boards is the PCA-6277. It can house dual 1GHz Pentium IIIs (based on the VIA Technologies Pro 133A chipset) along with up to up to 2 GB of high-speed PC-100/PC-133 SDRAM. Video is supplied by the ATI Rage 128 Pro 4XL VGA controller. An onboard IDE interface can connect to the new generation of ATA-66/100 hard disk drives, though most high-end applications will probably use the board's Adaptec's AIC-7892 Ultra 160 controller (and SCSI daughterboard) which supports Ultra 160 (160 MBps data transfer), Ultra 2 (80 MBps), and Ultra Wide (40 MBps) SCSI devices. There are also two Ethernet controllers/RJ-45 ports, as well as four USB ports, two PS/2 ports, hardware monitoring.

Because of the dual LAN connections, if one LAN unexpectedly fails, the PCA-6277 can still use the other one without interruption.

The PCA-6277 is priced as low as $615 with OEM volume discounts.

AGERE SYSTEMS

With so much attention on large-scale hardware, it's easy to forget that special chips are a key component of much of CompactPCI signaling. For example, the Ambassador series of devices from Agere Systems (Allentown, PA -- 800-372-2447, www.agere.com) are time slot interchangers (TSIs) and backplane interconnect devices designed into many cPCI-based systems. These chips are used for transporting data and clocking information over the 32-data line ECTF H.100 (PCI) and H.110 (cPCI) telephony backplanes to resource boards on the bus.

Agere's T8110 device is the first in the T8000 series to have a PCI interface for programming the device registers and memories. When in PCI-mode, the optional microprocessor interface can be used as a PCI minibridge to program non-PCI devices. Designers can program the Ambassador T8110 from a host processor through the PCI interface and also send control information to other devices such as DSPs or Framer ICs on the resource board. The T8110 can also partition its internal data memory to create up to 512 queues, called virtual channels, which can send data onto the local PCI bus. The T8110 masters the bus during these data transfers.

Perhaps the most interesting new Agere chip is the T8150, which serves as a bridge device into the new StarFabric switching protocol. It also can be designed into cPCI systems where it will work under the proposed PICMG 2.17 specification to incorporate the StarFabric protocol into these cPCI chassis via the J3 connector.

ALLIANCE SYSTEMS

After carefully evaluating the market, Alliance Systems (Plano, TX -- 800-977-1010, www.alliancesystems.com) now offers a CompactPCI solution for mission-critical telco applications called the C-Series.

Conceived as a compliment to Alliance's workhorse I-Series communication platforms, the NEBS-compliant C-Series is for customers who want a space-saving, high-density system with the highest availability.

The three C-Series models are the C-4000, C-10000 and C-15000, all with built-in redundancy. The C-4000 and C-10000 are designed to meet four nines (99.995%) of high availability (HA) while the C-10000 achieves five-nines (99.999%) of HA.

The seven slots of the C-4000 are mounted horizontally, which is why the unit is only 4U (7 inches) high. Standard fixtures include a 6U 800MHz Pentium III CPU board loaded with up to 1GB of ECC SDRAM, dual onboard 10/100BASE-T Ethernet controllers, and embedded video. Three front-accessible 200W hot-swappable power supplies provide N+1 redundancy.

Storage normally consists of an integrated EIDE hard drive, CDROM (on media blade), a 1.44 MB floppy drive and optional CompactFlash type II support.

The C-4000's interfaces include two 16C550 PC-compatible serial ports, two USB ports and a single PS/2 port with mouse and keyboard support via a y-cable.

The C-10000 has built-in redundancy for active system components including system slot CPU boards, power supplies, cooling, and system alarms. Alliance has also reduced MTTR (Mean Time To Replace) for system components by optimizing the cPCI front-loading, hot-swap standard to simplify replacement and minimize service time.

Built to meet NEBS Level 3 requirements, the C-15000 is ideal for applications requiring high system availability including service nodes, intelligent peripherals, central office server platforms, data acquisition, computer-based instrumentation, industrial automation/process control, automated test, imaging/machine vision, medical systems, networking or any critical computing server platform designed for the central office.

The 10U-high C-10000 has an eight-slot cPCI backplane. One slot (slot 8) is dedicated to the system CPU, while slots 1 through 7 are available for 32- or 64-bit CompactPCI peripheral cards and allow for rear-panel I/O. Or, you could have up to eight processor cards running at once.

The system supports 850MHz Pentium III CPU boards (Intel GX chipset with 100MHz Front Side Bus) with up to 1GB of ECC SDRAM (2 GB is possible). Dual onboard 10/100 BASE-T Ethernet controllers, and a PCI video controller are also onboard.

There are two 5.25-inch and two 3.5-inch front-accessible drive bays and the drive controllers can be EIDE or for optional CompactFlash type II. You can order the unit with either a 425W AC switchable 110V/220V or two 150W auto-switching, 110V/220V AC hot-swappable power supplies (DC is optional).

Both the C-4000 and the C-10000 have SMBus support on the backplane for system monitoring, control, and alarming functions. LEDs are provided on the front panel to indicate three alarming levels (Critical, Major, Minor), power-on and IDE activity. Also, two user-programmable LEDs are provided. Onboard temperature and power supply voltage monitoring is also included.

Key features of the 10U-high C-15000 include dual redundant, hot-swappable 500 MHz (850 MHz optional) Pentium III processor CPU boards that house 256 MB of ECC SDRAM.

Integrated into the Alliance CPU subsystems is a Redundant Alarm Subsystem that monitors the power supplies' Degrade (DEG) and Fail (FAL) signals, processor temperature, and onboard operating voltages. Critical, Major, and Minor LED indicators and an Alarm Cut Off (ACO) switch are provided on the front panel of each CPU. The alarms can verify proper system operation from the application layer and below and can generate an automated fault simulation mode, useful in testing hardware and software operation apart from application software. The development utility can display all management data in a graphical format.

The C-15000 has 14 cPCI slots: Four slots (physical slots 7 through 10) are dedicated to CPU subsystems. Twelve slots (1 through 6 and 11 through 16) can support 32- or 64-bit CompactPCI peripheral cards (rear panel I/O is supported). Additional I/O expansion can be done using up to two Peripheral Mezzanine Card (PMC) sites.

Four AC or DC input 150W hot-swappable power supplies provide N+1 redundancy.

All C-Series models have two 16C550 PC-compatible serial ports, two USB ports and a single PS/2 port with mouse and keyboard support via a y-cable. All models support Windows NT Server, Windows 2000, and Linux.

APW ELECTRONIC SOLUTIONS

APW Electronic Solutions (Waukesha, WI -- 262-523-7600, www.apw.com) is known for their extremely rugged and vibration-resistant Dot-Ten CompactPCI card cages, designed to the IEEE 1101.10 industry standard. They come in sizes ranging from four, six, or eight slots, and are 6U high (other sizes available on request). The backplanes for 3U- or 6U-high cards are available. There is a Transition Cage (IEEE 1101.11) option for rear-mounted boards.

APW generated a lot of buzz this year with their StealthBridge, a bus bridging method of cPCI that allows backplanes to be populated with many cPCI plug-in board and I/O expansion cards. It's called StealthBridge because of its electronically "invisible" design. With a StealthBridge backplane, a single 19-inch subrack can contain a system with 21 cPCI cards and a full complement of rear-mounted I/O transition cards -- a gain of two or more slots per system. Two extra slots translates into eight more T1 lines or 256 full duplex phone lines.

When using a 66 MHz cPCI bus (instead of a typical 33 MHz bus), StealthBridge's gain in slots becomes even more appealing because of the current five-slot limit to the 66 MHz bus, severely restricting the advantages of this faster bus speed. On a StealthBridge backplane, however, a full 21 slots can be achieved using multiple bridges.

ARIEL

The RS4100C from Ariel Corporation (Cranbury, NJ -- 609-860-2900, www.ariel.com) is a 6U-high Octal T1/E1/PRI CompactPCI Network Interface Card. It can switch up to 240 PSTN calls (analog, digital or voice) and terminate up to 120 digital calls. It's also hot swappable, features standard cPCI and H.110 interfaces, and provides four programmable Texas Instruments DSPs. Ariel's plans include providing documentation that shows OEMs how to work with these DSP resources so they can download proprietary or commercial-off-the-shelf software for functions such as vocoders, echo cancellers, speech analysis, data and fax modems, encryption, etc.

An OEM Development Kit is available that includes a Red Hat Linux reference driver, utilities, and all the documentation needed to write drivers for other operating systems. A Windows NT driver is also available to OEMs.

The RS4100C costs $10,500.

Next up, the RS4200C is the industry's highest density 56K/ISDN network access solution for CompactPCI systems. Dubbed the RS4200C, the card set combines eight T1/PRI or E1/PRI interfaces with up to 168 ports of modem, ISDN, GSM, and PHS access. The RS4200C solution is made up of two parts, the 6U RS4100C network interface card and the 6U MP5000 168-port DSP/modem card. The MP5000 is a high-density DSP/modem pool baseboard that provides 96 ports. The MP5000 also provides three mezzanine sites, which accommodate 24-port modules and enable the MP5000 to be equipped with up to 168 ports to handle access sessions involving any combination of modem (V.90, V.34bis, and fallbacks), ISDN, GSM, or PHS (Personal Handy System) wireless customer premises equipment.

The RS4200C list price starts at $20,484.

ARTESYN

Artesyn Communication Products LLC, a subsidiary of Artesyn Technologies (Madison, WI -- 608-831-5500, www.artesyncp.com) offers a whole spectrum of CompactPCI cards used in convergence applications.

For example, their new Artesyn CC1000 series of cPCI carrier cards is designed to quicken product evaluation and software development for the PM/PPC ProcessorPMC card (the PM/PPC product family is a line of PowerPC-based processor PCI Mezzanine Cards, or PMCs) as well as Artesyn's PM/3G-E1/T1 WAN I/O card.

By moving the processing component to the PMC, users have a complete processor/memory subsystem that's flexible and easy to upgrade. End users won't even notice an interruption in service when a new add-on module is plugged in, since the carrier cards have a non-transparent PCI-to-PCI Bridge enabling a separate processor domain from the cPCI host domain and supporting full Hot-Swap.

Next, Artesyn has introduced the MediaBlade, a modular, scalable, cPCI media subsystem for high-density, voice-over-Packet (VoP) media processing applications. MediaBlade is designed for OEMs or ISPs developing VoP conferencing systems, media servers, VoP voicemail servers and VoP announcement servers.

To shorten your time to market, MediaBlade's media subsystem is bundled with Artesyn's VoPware software solution, which gives you two APIs to choose from: A native API gives low-level access to media services and Real Time Transport Protocol (RTP) libraries, while a high-level CORBA API is available which abstracts the details of the lower-level libraries to enable even faster application development.

Systems can be scaled from a couple of hundred ports (one MediaBlade) to several thousand ports in a single cPCI backplane. Moreover, the MediaBlade's CORBA interface allows for even larger-scale applications, since it can be used to distribute media processing functions across several backplanes.

The media processor's architecture supports non-blocking and independent mixing of all media ports, which allows for CALEA (Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act) -- AKA wiretapping -- requirements and other features such as voice-enabled chat rooms, customer support monitoring, media stream mixing and sidebar conferencing.

Artesyn's third new product introduction is the PM/VoP 240 a voice over packet media processing solution that supports up to 240 simultaneous VoP on a single PMC module. More than just an add-on module, the PM/VoP 240 is an integrated hardware/software solution specifically optimized for media server and gateway applications demanding high port density. The PM/VoP 240 list price is $3,500. OEM discounts are available.

AUDIOCODES

Audiocodes Ltd. (San Jose, CA -- 408-577-0488, www.audiocodes.com) makes some of the industry's most impressive packetization boards in the CompactPCI form factor. Their 6U-high TrunkPack TP-610-192 cPCI VoIP Communication board, for example, can handle 192 voice or fax ports, and supports G.168 echo cancellation, G.723.1 and G.729A compression, and T.38 fax relay over IP. Call processing and voice traffic can enter and exit the board via either the H.110 interface or the board's optional six E1 or eight T1 interface module. A packet processor handles packet-streaming functions through the onboard 100Base-T interface, which can also be used to control the board using the MGCP protocol.

Both AudioCodes and Octave Communications (Nashua, NH -- 603-459-5200, www.octavecomm.com), experts in next-generation, reservation-less audio conferencing, recently announced a joint development project on a next generation IP conferencing product. AudioCodes' TrunkPack TP-610 will be integrated with the Octave OCI 1000 conferencing platform that supports various telephony applications and international networking protocols, including E1, T1, and ISDN PRI. The OCI 1000 platform enables customers to combine PSTN and VoIP functionality in the same footprint. The OCI 1000 allows an impressive 1344 ports in one chassis.

AudioCodes is also working with Advanced Fibre Communications Inc. (Petaluma, CA -- 707-794-7700, www.fibre.com) a developer and manufacturer of multi-service broadband solutions and outside plant for the telecom industry, on a Voice over Packet (VoP) product that will allow VoATM telephone access to the PSTN. It combines AudioCodes' TrunkPack TP-610ATM circuit pack that provides VoIP- and VoATM-to-TDM circuit conversion for AFC's VoATM/DSL applications running on AFC's AccessMAX family of Integrated Multiservice Access Platforms (IMAPs).

OEMs will now be able to offer an alternative to large and expensive gateway systems. The new device accepts various TDM circuit interfaces, including TR-08, ISDN User Part (ISUP) and Primary Rate Interface (PRI), and converts the voice streams to either VoIP or VoATM packet data under the control of MGCP or AudioCodes' TPNCP protocols. The target market includes full-scale system OEMs, Digital Loop Carrier vendors and softswitch vendors.

BLUE WAVE SYSTEMS

Blue Wave recently became part of the Motorola Computer Group (see MCG entry). Their engineers were responsible for the ComStruct CPCI/5421 and the CPCI/C6402 convergence boards.

The hot-swappable, 6U-high CPCI/5421 can handle 120 channels of voice-, fax- or data-over-IP when used with Texas Instruments' Telogy embedded VoIP software. The board can connect directly with the PSTN via an optional daughtercard quad T1 or quad E1 PMC module, and can connect to packet networks via the onboard 10/100 Base-TX Ethernet connection. Alternatively, the board can communicate with the outside world using I/O boards in other slots by connecting to them through the H.110 J4 connector interface and across the cPCI backplane.

The board is divided up into four independent Packet Processing Units (PPUs) each containing five Texas Instruments TMS320C5421 dual-core DSPs and a Motorola MPC860P PowerQUICC processor that runs VxWorks and controls data movement and network interfacing.

If you've got an application that demands even more processing power -- larger multichannel applications such as fixed access wireless, 3G wireless baseband processing, voice transcoding and recorders/archivers, then take a look at the more powerful, hot-swappable CPCI/C6402 DSP resource board.

The CPCI/6402 has eight fixed-point, 250 MHz TMS320C6202 or 300 MHz TMS320C6203 DSPs (each with 16 MB of SDRAM) and two 80 MHz Motorola MPC860T control processors (an architecture equivalent to two C6400 boards), an Agere Ambassador T8105 TDM switch providing a full H.110 bus interface, a single PMC site and a dual 10/100 Base-T Ethernet connection.

When using G.723.1 or G.729 compression, the CPCI/6402 can handle 160 channels per board (TMS320C6202 DSPs installed) or at least 192 channels per board (when TMS320C6203 DSPs are installed). With a GSM-AMR vocoder, the board supports 120 channels (using the TMS320C6202 devices).

The board supports Windows NT/2000, Solaris, Linux and VxWorks.

BROOKTROUT

Brooktrout Technology's (Needham, MA -- 781-449-4100, www.brooktrout.com) TR2020 is an open systems board for Voice Over Packet (VOP) development, available in both PCI and CompactPCI form factors. The TR2020 can do voice compression and interactive voice response (IVR), as well as fax and data relay.

The TR2020 includes onboard packetization, onboard telephony (ISDN, T1 robbed bit signaling and MFC-R2), and hot swap support. The cPCI version can provide up to 120 channels per board and a system can support up to 1,440 channels, which is more bandwidth than two 45 Mbps T-3 spans. Besides gateways, the TR2020 can also be an "IP Trunk Card" to IP-enable existing telephony applications such as audio conferencing and messaging.

One of Brooktrout's newest cPCI boards in their Netaccess Series is the NS300. It has eight software-selectable T1/E1 interfaces that can carry up to 240 TDM voice channels. The NS300 Series is aimed at the wireless/GPRS market. The new Base Station Systems (BSS), Serving GPRS Support Nodes (SGSN) and Gateway GPRS Support Nodes (GGSN) use various combinations of Frame Relay, X.25, SS7 Message Transfer Part 2 (MTP2) and UDP/IP protocols. The NS300 also has a packet relay module that can process packets at the board level, which reduces system cost, latency, scale and complexity.

Brooktrout also offers the NS700 SS7 Series board that houses four or eight T1/E1 interfaces and up to 32 SS7 links, as well as onboard MTP1, MTP2 and MTP3, plus a full SS7 software stack. Each board has a fast onboard processor to off-load the host's lower layer processing tasks.

Finally, the TR1000 Series is a board for carrier-based enhanced services. It provides voice and fax DSP resources, with optional onboard interfaces to either ISDN circuit or IP packet networks. The TR1000 comes in various cPCI and PCI configurations ranging up to 192 channels per board. Onboard ISDN signaling and IP packetization allow the TR1000 to support enhanced services on either circuit or packet networks under a common API.

BUSTRONIC

Bustronic (Fremont, CA -- 510-490-7388, www.bustronic.com), an Elma Company, has many CompactPCI products. Perhaps their most advanced product is their 16-slot Compact Packet Switched Backplane (cPSB) based on the PICMG 2.16 draft specification that is fully backwards-compatible to present CompactPCI technology.

Bustronic has also demonstrated a 21-slot StarFabric hybrid backplane that comes in a 7U form factor, and accepts standard cPCI 6U cards. Systems with this backplane will be able to achieve trunk speeds ranging up to OC12, OC48 and beyond, allowing 10,000 to 100,000 ports per single chassis.

Also this time around, Bustronic has introduced an amazingly compact two-slot H.110 Computer Telephony backplane for 1U-high "pizza box" enclosures. At the bottom of the backplane are the fan tray headers and the power "bugs" (power connector terminals onboard; in the cPCI industry vendors design power to enter the enter the backplane via power bugs, studs, or bus bars if the chassis telecom power supply bus is used), allowing easy hookup for the horizontal chassis. A thin-profile design near the power bugs allow cable access from the rear.

The Bustronic line includes four-, five-, six-, eight-, and 16-slot backplanes.

Developers know Bustronic for their 6U CompactPCI Test Extender. Extender boards are used to bring a circuit card entirely out of a card cage or enclosure so that it can be tested or debugged. Bustronic's 6U cPCI extender allows access to both sides of the test board, thus easing the attachment of test probes. The 6U cPCI Test Extender has ejector/injector latches that locks it into the chassis. The Extender also features a logic analyzer connection to troubleshoot signaling faults.

CARLO GAVAZZI

Carlo Gavazzi Mupac Inc. (Brockton, MA -- 508-588-6110, www.gavazzi-mupac.com) designs and manufactures standard and custom SBCs, chassis, and integrated system products.

Their new petite 545 Series CompactPCI enclosure offers from five to eight usable 6U x 160mm deep front-accessible slots and 6U x 80mm rear-accessible transition slots, all in a package only 7 inches to 10.5 inches (4U to 6U) high, 17 inches wide, and 12 inches deep. Constructed of .09-inch lightweight 5052-H32 aluminum, this is one of the lightest enclosures of its type in the industry, weighing about 13 lbs. without cards. It supports a variety of peripheral drives, allowing a combination of front-accessible and embedded devices. The subrack is compliant with IEEE 1101.10 and 1101.11.

The chassis supports hot swap and N+1 redundancy for fault tolerance and is provided with a 175-watt, front-pluggable power supply with either AC (90 to 264 volts) or DC (40 to 72 volts) input. Supply output current is 175 watts and selectable for +5 volts with 25 amps, +3.3 volts with 25 amps, +12 volts with 5 amps, or -12 volts with 1.5 amps.

Designed with telecom and NEBS compliance in mind, the rear panel includes an ESD jack and a ground stud in addition to fuses and an on/off switch. The front panels are shielded and include a second ESD jack.

Carlo Gavazzi has taken the CompactPCI quite seriously, and now offers a new line of cPCI backplanes that come in 3U-, 4U-, 6U-, or 7U-high formats and ranges 5.25 inches to 12.25 inches high. These backplanes can be configured with from two to 16 slots. Backplanes with fewer than five slots operate at 33 MHz, while those containing five or more slots have a backplane speed selectable to either 33 or 66MHz.

COMPAQ

The Compaq CI-1600 Server for Telecommunications from Compaq (Houston, TX -- 281-370-0670, www.compaq.com) is a rack-mounted, open-architecture, high-availability, CompactPCI system that runs Windows NT 4.0.

The system has dual eight-slot backplanes (H.110 compliant) with dual sets of modules (cards) including CPU modules, Hot Swap Controller (HSC) modules, and ServerNet system area network (SAN) modules (ServerNet SAN is a high-bandwidth, low-latency interconnect system optimized for efficient message and data passing).

Each one of the dual backplane domains includes one 333 MHz Pentium-II CPU board with 256 MB of memory, one ServerNet I SAN module, a Hot Swap Controller (HSC) module, up to five optional CompactPCI I/O modules, and two transition card cages that hold transition modules which provide I/O connectors at the back of the computer.

The CI-1600 supports hot swappable I/O boards as well as hot swap power supplies, and cooling modules. There's also a dual set of 6 GB hard drives and dual set of (not hot-swappable) CD-ROM drives.

Thanks to the system's redundancy, it can continue functioning even with the loss of a CPU board, I/O module, hard disk, CD-ROM, diskette drive, or power supply/cooling module. All of the cPCI modules, drives, fans and power supplies are front accessible, and rear-connection I/O allows for CPU module removal without disconnecting field wiring

The unit supports detection and remote reporting of power, temperature, and fan fail conditions. An extensive alarm system with a NEBS-compliant alarm status display panel is capable of interfacing with the central office maintenance facility.

BAT and Ring voltage connectors are located on the Power Distribution Panel.

CONTINUOUS COMPUTING

The Continuous Computing Corporation (San Diego, CA - 858-882-8800, www.ccpu.com), also known as CCPU, recently launched its CompactPCI-based High-Availability Hi-5 Voice-over-Packet family of products including media gateways, media gateway controllers, signaling gateways, OAM&P (Operation, Administration, Maintenance and Provisioning), billing platforms and enhanced IP media servers.

Hi-5 products are complete platform solutions that come with all hardware, software and protocols you need to quickly develop and deploy fault-resilient, telco-grade VOP applications for the next generation public telephone network. With Hi-5 a developer can write applications and deploy them in the central office within weeks. Applications such as call agents or announcement servers can be deployed on a complete platform almost instantly, giving application developers "five nines" of reliability.

CCPU's Hi-5 architecture is a NEBS-compliant CompactPCI system that has a packet backplane, replacing the conventional cPCI bus signaling with LAN-like links. The Hi-5 concept also includes CCPU's well-known high availability modular middleware, upSuite, which supports functions such as IP file system replication at wire-line speeds and sub-second failover at the card level with no dropped calls or data.

A CCPU Hi-5 system can incorporate up to 32 CPUs in a box having a 12U form factor. Multiprocessor prices start at $25,000, depending on the configuration.

DAWN PRODUCTS

Dawn Products (Fremont, CA - 510-657-4444, www.dawnvme.com) originally made their reputation as a VMEbus vendor, but has added such CompactPCI items to their offerings as backplanes, universal extender boards and prototype development chassis.

Take, for example, their 6U cPCI Computer Telephony Backplane. Compliant with all the usual hot-swap PICMG specifications, it has a right justified controller slot. Six +12V/GND MTA100 connector positions are onboard for fans or other accessories. An ATX power connector is optional. The backplane is available in two to eight slot configurations. The backplane has high-current power bugs, studs, or Bus Bars for +5V, +3.3V, VIO, GND, and FGND.

DIVERSIFIED TECHNOLOGY

Diversified Technology (Ridgeland, MS -- 601-856-4121, www.dtims.com) offers an impressive portfolio of CompactPCI computer chassis, single board computers and complete computer systems used in convergence applications.

First, the CPC8629 Pentium III single board computer (SBC) is a dual 933MHz Pentium III FC-PGA SBC (840 chipset) that comes in a 6U-high CompactPCI card form factor. The CPC8629 is based on Intel's 100MHz/133MHz front side bus (FSB). The CPU board can drive up to seven cPCI expansion slots.

The CPC8629 holds up to 4 GB of Rambus memory. Only 300 MHz and 400 MHz Direct Rambus devices are supported. There's also an Ultra-Wide LVD SCSI interface and an enhanced IDE Ultra ATA interface.

The CPC8629 can boot to OS without any floppy or hard drive connected to the system, since it has an onboard Compact Flash memory card that acts as a hard drive and uses standard OS partitioning, formatting and copying utilities, without cables and external devices.

Next up is the CPC8640, an SBC that's built around a 700MHz Celeron CPU (440BX chipset) in a CompactPCI form factor. Two standard 168-pin DIMM sockets hold up to 512MB of system memory. SDRAM memory is supported. Single-bit error correction (ECC) is available using standard parity DIMMs. The CPC8640 has both an Ultra-Wide SCSI controller (that can do 40 MBps data transfers) and a PCI EIDE controller that also supports 32-bit access, LBA mode, and bootable CD-ROM's.

Next, DTI's CPC8610 CPU board fits into a single cPCI system slot. It's driven by a 500 MHz Intel Embedded Pentium III (BGA2) CPU in a CompactPCI form factor (440BX chipset). One standard Small Outline Dual In-line Memory Module (SO-DIMM) socket is provided to hold up to 128 MB of system memory, such as SDRAM. Single-bit error correction (ECC) is available using standard parity SO-DIMMs.

The CPC8610 also features a National Semiconductor LM87 Serial Interface System Hardware Monitor for monitoring system critical variables like voltage, temperature, and CPU fan operation. There's also a PCI EIDE controller that supports ATA drives, 32-bit access, LBA mode, and bootable CD-ROMs. A single PMC site is also onboard.

Next, Diversified's SPC1000 is a Pentium III cPCI slave board computer, holding a 500 MHz processor based on the 440BX chipset. One standard 168-pin DIMM socket supports up to 256MB of system memory.

The SPC1000 communicates to the Host processor using Intel's 21554 PCI Non-transparent bridge. During the boot process, the Host processor allocates a memory and I/O window for communication to the SPC1000. The Host processor then uses this window to pass application specific data to and from the SPC1000. Hard Hat Linux supports the Non-transparent PCI Bridge through the Hard Net package. Installing this package allows the Host CPU to communicate to the SPC1000 using standard network protocols.

The SPC1000 also features an IPMI (Intelligent Platform Management Interface) Microcontroller for monitoring of system critical variables like voltage, temperature, and fan operation.

In terms of 19-inch rackmount systems, Diversified's 8U (14-inch) high FTC610 provides fault tolerant support for a complete system comprising power, drives, cooling, and a card cage. Aside from a standard 1.44MB floppy drive and an IDE CD-ROM, the FTC610 supports four SCA SCSI devices for hot-plug devices in the front of the unit. Two internal drives are also available with an optional kit.

The FTC610's CompactPCI card cage supports eight slots. The standard backplane provided with the FTC610 has slots for a processor module, seven CompactPCI expansion cards, three power supplies, and four SCA SCSI drives. The processor slot is 2.4 inches wide to allow for advanced CPUs with proper heat sinks. The expansion slots are all 6U in height. The backplane incorporates support for the CompactPCI Computer Telephony Specification (and therefore ECTF H.110) at all seven expansion slots.

Another even larger Diversified system is the FTC621. This hefty rackmount is 14U high (24.5 inches) x 19 inches wide and a 14.5-inch deep rackmount chassis, with a typical configured weight of 76 lbs.

Power input can be 110-220V A/C or -48V D/C. From three to five hot-swappable 150W 3U power supplies provide from 300 to 600W with N+1 redundancy. Using so many small power supplies allows for relatively low cost sparing and replacement as compared to systems using fewer, but larger, power supplies.

The FTC621 supports drive configurations ranging up to six front-mounted SCA SCSI drive modules and two internally mounted 3.5-inch IDE drives. Drive bays can be allocated for a micro CD-ROM and a micro 3.5-inch floppy drive if the configuration warrants it. The SCA SCSI drive modules plug directly into the 3U card cage. IDE drives and associated cables can be accessed through the rear access panel.

The standard H.110 backplane provided with the FTC621 has one slot for the processor module, two slots for PCI-to-PCI bridge modules, and 16 cPCI expansion slots. The processor slot is 2.4 inches wide to allow for advanced CPU's with proper heat sinks without interfering with any of the expansion slots.

Finally, the CPT605 Desktop Development Chassis has a CompactPCI backplane that allows for front and rear mounted 6U cards. The front accessible slots include one CPU (Pentium II), three expansion slots, and one power supply slot. Connectors are available for rear I/O cards as well.

ELMA ELECTRONIC

Elma Electronic Inc. (Fremont, CA -- 510-656-3400, www.elma.com) recently introduced a new 9U Type 15C CompactPCI chassis with advanced cooling for packaging power dense circuit cards.

Elma has gave top-notch cooling as the top priority for this system, which incorporates radial blowers into its redundant cooling system, thus providing three times the performance in high static pressure environments as you'd get with traditional muffin fans.

The system's roomy interior allows developers to select 6U cPCI H.110 compliant backplanes ranging in sizes ranging from four to 21 slots. The 9U Type 15C has a flush mounted 6U x 160mm IEEE 1101.10 card cage, a rear 6U x 80mm IEEE 1101.11 compliant card cage and an interesting, advanced shielding concept that's carried throughout the enclosure with all front panels and modules (peripherals and PSU).

An optional monitoring system for DC voltages, fan fail and over temperature conditions is available. All units are "turnkey" systems coming fully assembled, wired and tested with a two-year warranty.

The 9U Type 15C system starts under $2,000 and ships in approximately six weeks.

FLEXTEL

As its name implies, Flextel (Ivrea, Italy -- +39-0125-235311, San Jose, CA -- 408-768-8673, www.flextel.it) offers amazingly flexible fault-tolerant computing platforms.

For example, take their netVision 5000 Multi-Service Platform series for advanced convergence solutions such as VoIP gateways, Internet call centers, unified messaging and voice portals. The netVision 5000 series allows CompactPCI, PCI and ISA boards to harmoniously work together within the same chassis! To be exact, it all depends on the configuration you order: the netVision 5012 allows for a 12-slot chassis (six cPCI slots) and the netVision 5006 has six slots, three of which can be cPCI slots.

On these systems, more independent processors can run concurrently, whereby one can drive the I/O segment, and other processors can run applications interfaced by the local I/O ports or an inter-processor communication bus. In case the processor driving the I/O cards fails, the manageability system running on an independent Motorola 860 is able to automatically restart it or disconnect it and link the I/O subsystem to another processor in the chassis as well.

Whereas the netVision 5006 has one I/O segment for its six slots and is able to host a processor module, 4 PCI and 3 CompactPCI cards, the netVision 5012 has two I/O segments (one for the first six slots and another for the second six slots). These can be configured dynamically to become a single twelve-slot I/O segment, hosting eight PCI and six CompactPCI cards with fault-tolerant processors (this feature enables configurations that can run two different subsystems concurrently).

If a processor fails on one segment, the system will be automatically reconfigured, instantly becoming a single twelve-slot configuration now relying upon the second processor.

The Flextel backplane also supports a number of buses simultaneously, including a 1 Gbps inter-processor communication bus (optionally two buses for a total of 4.2 Gbps), a PCI/ISA I/O bus and a H100/MVIP/SCSA TDM bus. There are also two management buses.

The system can support up to four Processor Modules, each having up to two Intel Pentium IIIs and up to 4 GB of SDRAM. A netVision chassis can be configured to achieve 99.9995% uptime. All system components (including PCI and ISA cards) can be made redundant for maximum reliability. All modules are hot swappable for rapid, non-disruptive servicing and are accessible from the front.

FORCE COMPUTERS

Force Computers (San Jose, CA -- 408-369-6000, www.forcecomputers.com) is perhaps the largest producer of CompactPCI equipment in the world. Their new Force Centellis CO 21000-12U is a carrier-grade Compact Packet-Switching Backplane (CPSB) platform in a NEBS Level 3-compliant CompactPCI chassis. Because of the "packet" backplane, the system is extremely flexible and can be configured in an incredible number of ways.

For example, with the UltraSPARC power and Solaris compatibility option, the Centellis CO 21542-12U is powered by an UltraSPARC-IIi processor and runs the Solaris 8 operating system (factory installed), so customers can extend their existing SPARC/Solaris investments and leverage many existing Solaris-compatible applications. Customers can also consolidate valuable rack space by embedding the SPARC/Solaris server that may already be in the rack into the CPSB platform.

The development system configuration is called CENT CO 21000-12U-DC-D and includes one ZNYX Networks ZX4500 Ethernet switch and two 500W power supplies. The standard redundant Ethernet switch fabric system configuration is CENT CO 21000-12U-T-DC and includes two ZNYX Networks ZX4500 Ethernet switches each with 64 MB DRAM, 24 10/100 Ethernet interfaces (14 PICMG 2.16 and eight external), one PMC interface, two Gigabit Ethernet interfaces and a 200 MHz MPC8240 PowerPC processor. A 6U Telecom Alarm Module is included that has an integrated twin alarm panel, power and temperature sensor cables.

The redundant Ethernet switch fabric system configuration with the SPARC/Solaris server option is called CENT CO 21542-12U/SOL8-256-1HS-T-DC and includes with the standard platform one UltraSPARC-IIi processor based SBC with 256MB RAM, seven 10/100 Ethernet interfaces, three Wide Ultra2 SCSI interfaces, four serial interfaces, Solaris 8 operating system and 18GB Wide Ultra2 SCSI hard disk drive. A Telecom Alarm Module included.

You can power your system with the 500 MHz CPCI-550/552 UltraSPARC-IIe-based "Universal Mode" CPU board. The CPCI-550/552 is a "universal mode" UltraSPARC-IIe processor-based cPCI SBC and is the second in Force's new CompactPCI server blade family for CompactPCI Packet-Switching Backplane (cPSB) systems.

Force's onboard SENTINEL chip can be used to combine several CPCI-550 SBCs into a single rack, thus enabling them to communicate with each other to make the CPCI-550 a building block for scalable, small-footprint systems that can handle third-generation (3G) wireless, VoIP and other telecom/datacom applications.

A more powerful SBC in this line is the CPCI-735/736 "Universal-Mode" Mobile Pentium III Processor-based SBC. It can house a Mobile Pentium III 700MHz processor and has a 64-bit local bus (via a PMC slot) for Gigabit Ethernet, Fibre Channel or other high-bandwidth, data-intensive I/O demands.

The board can hold 1GB of ECC-protected SDRAM (2GB optional) and 32 MB of onboard IDE FlashDisk memory (64MB optional)

High speed Ethernet connections to the network or between systems is done with Force's PMC/Gigabit Ethernet/82543 network interface card (NIC), which is a an autoconfiguring 10/100/1000 Ethernet NIC in a PMC form-factor. The card can do full-duplex operation -- which effectively doubles the available bandwidth -- when enabled by the host system driver. When connected to a standard local area network, the PMC/Gigabit Ethernet/82543 NIC also supports CAT 3 and CAT 4 UTP cable.

For embedded and networking applications, take a look at the Force PowerPMC-250, a 450 MHz G4 Power PC processor-based module in a PMC form factor. Aside from the 128 MB of ECC-protected SDRAM, there's also 32 MB of user Flash memory and 1 MB of Boot Flash memory.

GENERAL MICRO SYSTEMS

The Navigator from General Micro Systems (Rancho Cucamonga, CA -- 909-980-4863, www.general-micro-systems.com) is a hot-swappable CompactPCI CPU board for high-availability convergence applications such as web and Internet servers.

The Navigator is available with a choice of a field-upgradeable Pentium III 366-to-600 MHz Celeron or 500 MHz-to-1 GHz Coppermine-256 processor. The Celeron processor, designed for low-power applications, has 128 KB of on-die, no-wait-state cache. The Coppermine-256 is for high-performance applications and comes with 256 KB of on-die, no-wait-state cache. Both processors are equipped with up to 1 GB of main memory, which they access via a high-speed Front Side Bus (FSB) running at 66 MHz for the Celeron; 100 MHz for the Coppermine. This field-upgradeable memory is packaged as a pair of SO-DIMM modules.

The Navigator has two PCI Mezzanine Card (PMC) sites, one of which supports rear-panel I/O. The Navigator provides a PMC expansion module with three PMC sites. This module, when plugged into Navigator's PMC expansion connector, gives the board a total of five PMC slots, while occupying only one additional CompactPCI slot.

The Navigator's System Health Monitor reports processor temperature, onboard voltages, and fan speed to the OS. The Navigator also provides 100% Power-On-Self-Test (POST) diagnostics, which uses two binary LED displays on the front panel to indicate the status of over 50 tests that are applied each time power is applied to the board.

Software support for the Navigator C159 includes Windows NT/2000, VxWorks, Linux, Solaris and QNX.

The Navigator C159 starts at $2,794 in single-piece quantity, less memory and CPU.