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FocalPoint Reference Designs
Fulcrum has developed a number of reference designs which demonstrate the capabilities of the FocalPoint devices and enable customers to get to market quickly with integrated, low-cost, and differentiated product offerings. The three most commonly-leveraged designs are the "Monaco" 10G Ethernet platform with SFP+ interfaces, the "Reno" 10G Ethernet platform with CX4 interfaces, and the "Vegas" 1G Ethernet platform.
"Monaco" 24-port 10-Gigabit Ethernet Switch Chip Reference Design
"Monaco" is an efficient 24-port SFP+ reference design for the FocalPoint 10G Ethernet switch family and can be used to rapidly and exhaustively evaluate the performance and flexibility of the FM4224, either in a test environment or a live data center network.
The Monaco reference design contains a Freescale 8543 control processor which can be used to program the platform for a variety of configurations, and provide health and activity information as requested. The platform also contains Fulcrum’s TestPoint™ software, which operates on Linux 2.6 embedded operating system. The optional system software includes Fulcrum's ControlPoint™ Software Suite, which contains embedded Linux OS, test and configuration tools, and NextHop UNS switching and routing software.
Monaco also includes an Altera EP3C80F484C Cyclone-III series FPGA between the FM4224 and the Freescale processor, which can be used to off-load CPU tasks such as DMA or add proprietary features such as advanced congestion management or load balancing. A basic DMA FPGA configuration is provided with the platform.
Monaco Reference Design Highlights
- Thoroughly evaluate the FM4224 with virtually any traffic and load pattern, and any number of active interfaces. With 24 SFP+ interfaces, the platform can be easily connected to external testers and analyzers, and can be economically connected to computing and storage systems.
- Leverage the unparalleled performance of the Monaco platform to establish the baseline for testing NICs, servers, and storage sub-systems in live clustered configurations.
- Accelerate software development by leveraging the full-featured platform for software design and test – prior to the availability of system hardware.
- Accelerate hardware development by leveraging the design of the platform to kick-start a custom design. Schematics, layouts, thermal analysis, and noise analysis are available to assist the hardware designer and expedite system design and integration.
- Test networking features, which include: MAC-based switching and IP routing, priority flow control, VLANs, spanning tree, link aggregation, ACLs and statistics.
- Leverage the embedded FPGA to implement proprietary features such as advanced congestion management or load balancing.
- Reference design features include:
- 24 full-rate 10G Ethernet interfaces (SFP+ interfaces)
- 16K MAC addresses (with no multicast limits)
- Priority Flow Control (802.1Qbb)
- 4K VLANs (port- or MAC-based, with Q-in-Q support)
- Multiple Spanning Tree (802.1D, s, w)
- Link Aggregation (802.3ad, any number of ports/groups)
- Port- and MAC-based security (802.1X)
- Sophisticated statistics gathering (RMON, triggers, etc.)
- Advanced topologies (mesh, fat tree, etc).
"Reno" 24-port 10-Gigabit Ethernet Switch Chip Reference Design
"Reno" is a compact 24-port reference design for the FocalPoint 10G Ethernet switch family can be used to rapidly and exhaustively evaluate the performance and flexibility of the FM4224, either in a test environment or a live data center network. The platform can be ordered in one of three port configurations (in a 1U chassis form-factor):
- 24 CX4 interfaces
- 12 CX4 interfaces, plus 12 XFP interfaces
- 12 CX4 interfaces, plus 12 SFP+ interfaces
The Reno reference design contains a Freescale 8541 control processor which can be used to program the platform for a variety of configurations, and provide health and activity information as requested. The platform also contains Fulcrum’s TestPoint™ software, which operates on Linux 2.6 embedded operating system. The optional system software includes Fulcrum's ControlPoint™ Software Suite, which contains embedded Linux OS, test and configuration tools, and NextHop UNS switching and routing software.
Reno Reference Design Highlights
- Thoroughly evaluate the FM4224 with virtually any traffic and load pattern, and any number of active interfaces. With CX4 connectors, the platform can be easily connected to external testers and analyzers, and can be economically connected to computing and storage systems.
- Evaluate other hardware elements. Leverage the unparalleled performance of the FM4224 to set the baseline for testing Network interface cards, TCP offload engines, application accelerators, servers, and storage sub-systems in live clustered configurations.
- Evaluate other software elements. Leverage the flexible Freescale 8541 processor to test any relevant operating system (e.g., Linux, VXWorks, Nucleus) and accompanying software stack.
- Accelerate software development by leveraging the full-featured platform for software design and test – prior to the availability of system hardware.
- Accelerate hardware development by leveraging the design of the platform to kick-start a custom design. Schematics, layouts, thermal analysis, and noise analysis are available to assist the hardware designer and expedite system design and integration.
- Develop hardware and software simultaneously and test software prior to hardware availability.
- Thoroughly test corner cases and traffic patterns using an external traffic generator/analyzer which can send, receive, and analyze customer-defined traffic patterns (both as legal frames and error conditions).
- Reference design features include:
- 24 full-rate 10G Ethernet interfaces
- 16K MAC addresses (with no multicast limits)
- Priority Flow Control (802.1Qbb)
- 4K VLANs (port- or MAC-based, with Q-in-Q support)
- Multiple Spanning Tree (802.1D, s, w)
- Link Aggregation (802.3ad, any number of ports/groups)
- Port- and MAC-based security (802.1X)
- Sophisticated statistics gathering (RMON, triggers, etc.)
- Advanced topologies (mesh, fat tree, etc.)
"Vegas" 48-port 1-Gigabit Ethernet Switch Chip Reference Design
The "Vegas" reference design showcases the virtues of the FocalPoint FM4112 1G Ethernet switch chip, offering 48 1GBaseT ports, plus up to 8 CX4 10G Ethernet ports in a compact 1U rack-mountable chassis. Vegas delivers latency well under 1uS, along with a fully-provisioned architecture with no internal system-level bottlenecks.
The Vegas reference design contains the same control CPU subsystem as the Reno platform, along with Fulcrum's TestPoint scripting software and related driver and API code.
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