Altera & AMCC target server farms: Altera acquires AMCC product line
Altera and AMCC are to jointly develop and market solutions for data centre applications, combining Altera FPGAs with silicon solutions from AppliedMicro, including the company’s full line of connectivity and ARM 64-bit X-Gene Server on a Chip products.
“This agreement underscores our continued focus on enabling integrated, purpose-built solutions for our data center OTN [optical transport network] customers,” said George Jones, Vice President, co-GM, Connectivity Products of AppliedMicro. “Combining Altera’s advanced FPGA technology with our X-Gene Server on a Chip, Gearbox, PQX and QPSK products will provide our customers with highly optimised, cost-effective designs for next-generation data centre infrastructure.”
The collaboration will include shared efforts on system solution definition, co-development of reference designs and supporting software development.
“We believe the combination of the AppliedMicro processing and connectivity solutions with our FPGA technology will result in some of the industry’s most innovative, flexible, and high-performance solutions for data-centre and OTN applications,” said Scott Bibaud, senior vice president and general manager, Communications and Broadcast Division at Altera.
The combined technologies will target enterprise networking platforms, next-generation data centres and storage. The cooperation will include hardware and software, providing the basis for extremely fast-turn designs in these multiple application areas.
At the same time, Altera has announced that it is to acquire TPACK, an AMCC subsidiary that has focussed on delivering complete FPGA-based OTN (optical transport network) products targeting packet and optical networking equipment suppliers. Altera says this will enable it to accelerate and expand its OTN offerings to support designs resulting from Altera’s acquisition in 2010 of Avalon Microelectronics, an OTN IP provider.
TPACK develops OTN solutions in the form of “SoftSilicon” technology to provide mapping, multiplexing and cross-connection of packets over an OTN network. Its approach is to develop standard chipset solutions that are similar to ASSPs, but that target FPGAs for implementation. SoftSilicon products are available today on Altera FPGAs and have been in production for some years. TPACK claims to have have displaced ASSPs in designs at leading OEMs at 10-Gbps, 40-Gbps and 100-Gbps. Altera says the acquisition of TPACK boosts its portfolio of OTN solutions, including cost-optimised 20-Gbps OTN mappers for Metro applications and 10 x 10 Gbps OTN Cross-Connect using partial reconfiguration for Packet-Optical Transport Systems.
"Altera has been collaborating with TPACK on joint marketing and development since 2007,” said aAltera’s Scott Bibaud, “The combined capabilities of TPACK and Altera accelerate our OTN solutions roadmap to support emerging applications beyond 100G. TPACK’s recent demonstration of partial reconfiguration on Altera Stratix V devices validates the advantages of programmable technology for high-density OTN applications requiring multiple client interfaces.” Altera adds that this strategy will assist the OTN industry’s evolution beyond 100G by delivering flexible solutions not possible in ASSPs with increased levels of performance and integration. TPACK is located in Copenhagen, Denmark.
Altera, www.altera.com
AMCC, www.apm.com
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