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networkZONE Products for the week of May 9, 2005
Agere Systems Says…
Agere's Integrated Development Package Speeds Convergence
Of Current, Future Wireless Network Deployments
Global Savings Potential of Agere Solutions Estimated at $300
Million
Agere Systems has unveiled its TrueAdvantage Wireless Access Solutions.
These solutions feature new technology that allows current and future wireless
systems, commonly referred to as second-generation (2G) and third-generation
(3G), to be simultaneously supported over a single network. The solutions
also potentially save wireless service providers worldwide up to $300 million
per year in T1/E1, Synchronous Optical Network/Synchronous Digital Hierarchy
(SONET/SDH), and Ethernet leased line backhaul costs. Agere also announced
today that NEC has selected Agere's TrueAdvantage solution, including Agere's
Advanced PayloadPlus (APP) network processor chips, for use in its wireless
access equipment.
The TrueAdvantage solutions consist of a broad family of feature-rich networking chips such as APP network processors, LLP (Link Layer Processor), TADM, Ultramapper, and Hypermapper framing and mapping devices. Additionally, the solutions offer turn-key software packages, reference designs, and hardware development systems that allow telecom equipment manufacturers to quickly and efficiently build lower-cost, higher-performance wireless access network equipment.
As wireless carriers add support for emerging data applications, which require higher bandwidth than voice services, the network transition from slower 2/2.5G data services to faster 3G data services is already taking place. Wireless carriers are increasing the revenue-generating potential of their networks while simultaneously striving to reduce their costs and make better use of their backhaul transport bandwidth.
Focused specifically on the mobile wireless space, the TrueAdvantage Wireless Access Solutions efficiently address these needs and help usher in a new era of lower-cost, higher performance, and more reliable wireless communications. Agere's platform supports a variety of protocols required for 2/2.5G and 3G networks on a single, dynamically programmable device.
Agere enables the convergence of 2/2.5G and 3G network applications into a single solution by integrating legacy 2/2.5G protocols, such as Transcoder Rate Adapter Unit (TRAU), Frame Relay, and AAL1 Circuit Emulation, into a solution which also provides 3G protocol support. By integrating required 2/2.5G protocols such as TRAU, along with the flexible protocol processing needed for more complex 3G ATM and IP networks, Agere is able to offer, for the first time in the industry, all the functionality needed to support 2G/3G converged equipment within a single device.
The benefits of this integration are analogous to merging what used to be three distinct media players (a VCR, compact disk, and digital video disk player) into a single consumer product. By combining these player formats into one, customers now enjoy either technology without worrying about the media type or making space for three times the number of consoles in their home entertainment centers.
Before the availability of the Agere solution, the cost of simultaneously supporting 2/2.5G and 3G networks forced wireless service providers to consume precious real estate with separate equipment for each wireless network. Agere's novel approach allows the wireless carriers to converge these networks onto a single platform, reducing equipment cost and operational expenses, improving scalability, and ultimately providing the ability to lower the cost of consumer services.
Accelerating wireless network convergence allows carriers to cut costs by reducing the number of T1/E1, SONET/SDH, and Ethernet backhaul links they must deploy. Additional backhaul savings can be achieved by improving the efficiency of T1/E1 backhaul links with the flexible protocol processing of the TrueAdvantage Wireless Solutions. By handling a mix of traffic types and providing support for header compression and multiplexing protocols such as PPP mux (Point-to-Point multiplexing) and cUDP (compress User Datagram Protocol), backhaul efficiency is improved by as much as 35%. This offers wireless carriers a potential global savings of $300M per year as fewer T1/E1 leased lines will be required to cover a service area.
All these capabilities are delivered to wireless equipment manufacturers in conjunction with the new production-ready TrueAdvantage Wireless Access Functional Programming Interface (FPI) software that runs on Agere's APP300 and APP500 network processor product families. The FPI can be used as a black box, which can easily integrate into targeted wireless applications such as Node B, BTS, RNC and BSC wireless equipment. In addition, equipment manufacturers can easily modify the source code to incorporate proprietary features and create differentiated systems. As with all solutions built on the TrueAdvantage platform and Agere's network processors, the data plane software requires up to 30 times fewer lines of code for a given function than competing processors.
These development alternatives combined translate to reduced product development costs and defects and improved reliability and scalability. Using the FPI software, manufacturers can avoid several time-consuming tasks such as learning device-specific details, programming the data plane code, and developing several hundred thousand lines of control plane code. The FPI Software solution is estimated to save more than 8 to 10 staff years of development. These savings are critical as seventy-to-eighty percent of the lifetime cost of a programmable system is in software development.
Agere announced today that NEC, a leading 3G wireless equipment maker, selected the APP500 network processor for use in its wireless access equipment. Equipment makers, such as NEC, carefully consider the network processor selection as it represents a critical element within wireless equipment. The complete Agere wireless solution supports the broad diversity of wireless protocols and interworking required. The solution architecture offers a high level of hardware and software flexibility, as well as scalability, which in turn offers Agere's customers substantial development savings.
"Converging and saving costs of backhaul wireless links are major and related industry trends," said Allen Nogee, analyst with In-Stat. "Agere's TrueAdvantage Wireless Access Solution, with its unprecedented integration of 2G and 3G systems onto a single network, economical software for use with network processors, and scalability for use in a wide range of wireless equipment and multiple protocols and standards, amount to key catalysts for driving this market growth."
Agere's Wireless Access FPI is targeted for use in several types of equipment, including Node B's, BTS's, BSC's and RNC's. The FPI combined with the complete TrueAdvantage Wireless offerings enables a common platform design with:
analogZONE Says . . .
This release builds on the extensive development platform for Agere's networking products that I reviewed in January 2005. I'm posting a brief update because this addition to the already-extensive arsenal is a set of customized tools and reference designs for the wireless market. The package includes a tightly-linked set of elements that support both the APP300 network processor and APP550 link layer processor and other Agere framing, mapping and Ethernet silicon.
The package includes new reference designs for Node B and BTS, RNC, and BSC elements that are devoted specifically to wireless convergence. As with the earlier software package, much of the lower-level software is accessed through a Functional Programming Interface (FPI) that sits a level above the API. In theory this allows programmers to develop software in terms of the application at hand without having to look at lower-level functions except for occasional low-level bit twiddling. Agere offers its reference design as hunks of "black box" of code that is configured at the FPI level for turnkey use and an open source code version that can be easily customized for a specific application.
The tool set capitalizes on the Agere chip family's strong internetworking capabilities to enable development of products that support both 2G, 2.5G and 3G on the same card. I think that this is a good strategy because flexible equipment that permits easy migration to advanced services while reducing service disruption to legacy subscribers. And even after the transition to 3G is complete the development tools should make adding new services should be much easier.
As described in painful detail in the release above, Agere provides you with the working guts of a system that handles both the 2G voice streams that usually run in TROU (transcode rate adapter unit) protocol over T1/E1 and the 3G voice is mostly ATM today. It also has provisions for IP-based voice traffic over PPP/T1 or native Ethernet in the future. To handle this smorgasbord of protocols, you get both ATM and IP protocol stacks for backhaul links, plus support for moving services across backplanes by encapsulating the traffic into whatever protocol the backplane is using.
By converging 2G and 3G services on the same pipeline, your customers will save on backhaul costs during the 2G/3G transition. They'll also be able to take advantage of compression technologies (such as compressed UDP and PPP muxing) to improve backhaul capacity on existing lines by 20% or more (Agere claims up to 37%).
As I've said with their earlier reference designs, the higher layer software should make Agere's extremely powerful networking processors more useful to smaller engineering groups with fewer programming resources or critical time-to-market issues. Providing most of the tools necessary to quickly crank out 2G/3G wireless system elements should help get them some traction in some key markets.
About the only problem I see here is that Agere has not had much luck in creating a vibrant third-party support community like those that surround the Freescale and Texas Instruments product lines. While Agere has provided a tremendous set of tools and design elements for its customers, no single vendor can anticipate or address all the needs and technical issues that arise around complex parts like the Agere processors. Hopefully, we'll see some grass-roots support emerging for these excellent chips as sales volumes grow to justify the efforts of an intrepid software entrepreneur.
Agere's TrueAdvantage Wireless Solutions are in production.
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