Pigeon Point Systems announces IPMC and carrier IPMC BMR starter kits using SmartFusion FPGAs

MOUNTAIN VIEW, USA: Pigeon Point Systems (PPS), an Actel company, has announced new AdvancedTCA (ATCA) IPM Controller (IPMC) and ATCA/AdvancedMC (AMC) Carrier IPMC Board Management Reference (BMR) Starter Kits using Actel's new SmartFusion intelligent mixed signal FPGA.

SmartFusion is the only device that integrates an FPGA, hard ARM Cortex-M3-based microcontroller subsystem (MSS) and programmable analog, offering full customization, IP protection and ease-of-use.

These comprehensive IPMC and Carrier IPMC solutions based on Pigeon Point's field-proven IPMC offerings and the SmartFusion intelligent mixed signal FPGA accelerate customer design cycles and enable designers to concentrate on differentiating their ATCA board products (including those with AMC slots) instead of expending internal effort meeting management requirements for xTCA specification compliance.

By leveraging Pigeon Point's proven record for compliance, interoperability and responsive support, together with the flash-based SmartFusion device for power and system management, Pigeon Point Systems delivers comprehensive IPMC and Carrier IPMC reference solutions that reinforce Actel's commitment to the strong worldwide adoption of xTCA by telecom equipment manufacturers.

xTCA includes the ATCA and AMC architectures, as well as the complementary MicroTCA architecture.

Compared to other core silicon used for xTCA management controllers, SmartFusion devices deliver:

* Customizability, due to the built-in flash FPGA; IP blocks can be added to the FPGA to provide management focused functionality, such as an IPMI-defined register-based external interface via the CoreLPC block, but also for board-specific functionality, eliminating the need for a separate PLD device on the board.

* Higher processor performance with a 32-bit ARM Cortex-M3 processor operating at 80 MHz, the optimum balance for controller, FPGA and analog operation. Typical existing core silicon used for management controllers operates at less than half that frequency.

* Advanced analog processing, with zero load on the ARM processor to do xTCA-aware analog sensor monitoring for up to 32 analog sensors. The analog compute engine can be configured so that xTCA analog sensors are sampled and processed via the sample sequencing engine and the post-processing engine.

The new kits deliver a world class solution for the mandatory management controllers used on ATCA boards and ATCA AMC carrier boards and enables customers to develop cost-effective, compliant and interoperable ATCA board and AMC carrier board products.