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ATCA, MTCA & AMC
Figure Fig ig igu gure 3: FPGA FP F GA G for fo f r reselections: RTP
TP T ap aapplication pp pplication with
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ta t
plane processing.
tor is ideal to make all interfaces of the QorIQ
accessible, via the backplane, to other boards.
The benefits of the small size, possible redundancy,
high flexibility of interfaces and the
standardized management functions are very
well recognized and appreciated in markets
such as aerospace, high-energy physics, industrial
automation, and of course the communication
market. The solution is to combine the
best of two worlds: state-of–the-art multi-core
processors connected to fully user-accessible
FPGA resources in AMC form factor.
N.A.T. chose the QorIQ processor family for
its new AMC board selection to ensure being
at the leading edge of communications processors
boards. For the FPGA Virtex-6 was selected
because of its high-speed interfaces and internal
high performance architecture. The Virtex-6
is integrated directly into the data path between
the AMC backplane connector and the QorIQ
allowing: data manipulation on the incoming
and outgoing data, security check of data packets,
customized encryption and decryption,
which is different to that implemented on
QorIQ, custom-specific protocol processing
and acceleration, and flexible DSP processing
on the data packets. Also, it can be used as coprocessor
to the QorIQ. The AMC standard is
ideally suited as a platform due to its differential
high speed connections, which are protocolagnostic.
This allows using the same pins for
GbE, or PCIexpress or Serial Rapid IO etc.
As the QorIQ-P4080 (8 cores, 8 GbE, 2 XAUI,
3 PCIe, 2 SRIO, 2 USB, SD support) is pincompatible
to QorIQ-P4040 (4 cores, 8 GbE,
2 XAUI, 3 PCIe, 2 SRIO, 2 USB, SD support)
and also to the P5020 (2 true 64-bit cores, 5
GbE, 1 XAUI, 4 PCIe, 2 SRIO, 2 SATA, 2 USB,
SD support) etc., the same AMC hardware
can be used for all of these as well as future
QorIQ chips (for instance P3041, P5010).
The AMC processor boards from N.A.T., the
NAMC-QorIQ-P40 and NAMC-QorIQ-P50,
offer an on-board Virtex-6 FPGA. The FPGA
can be used for example as a cross-connector to
combine the appropriate high-speed interface
with the respective AMC backplane pins. Custom
Figure Fi 4: 4 RTP TP T application pp p li ti with ith th t llegacy TD TTDM M
interfaces and protocols can also be implemented
in the FPGA to connect the extended AMC region
to the interfaces of the QorIQ. One example
could be the H.110 bus, which is the standard
telecom bus in the TDM world. The FPGA can
also be used as pre-selector to split the data
stream to route certain data blocks to the QorIQ
and others to alternative protocol engines contained
in the FPGA. Less than 5% of the onboard
Virtex-6 FPGA of the NAMC-QorIQ-
P40 is reserved for specific board-support functions.
Thus, 95% of the FPGA can be used for
customized applications. The Virtex-6 FPGA offers
130k logic cells, 480 x DSP48 E1 slices and 9
Mbit up to 368 000 logic cells, 768 x DSP48E1
slices, 15 Mbit, 720 user I/O, 4 x 10/100 GbE
and 20 x GTX transceivers. An additional external
QDR memory is on board. N.A.T. has already
experienced the benefits of the NAMC-8569-
CPU, a combination of a Freescale PowerQUICC
MPC8569 with an on-board FPGA from Lattice
in the industrial market. The successors are
based on the QorIQ P1011, 1020, P2010 and
P2010 plus low-cost FPGAs, addressing markets
like industrial automation. n