Symmetricom announces IEEE 1588 (PTP) client reference design using Freescale silicon

SAN JOSE, USA: Symmetricom Inc., a leader in precise time and frequency technologies, announced the availability of the company’s new SCi 2000 reference design board utilizing Freescale Semiconductor’s processor technology.

Based on Symmetricom’s industry-leading IEEE 1588 (Precision Time Protocol) technology, this highly power-efficient reference design board integrates the SCi 2000 Embedded Software Clock that runs on Freescale’s popular PowerQUICCTM platform.

This offering, highlighted at this week’s Freescale Technology Forum Americas, provides Network Equipment Manufacturers (NEMs) and Telecommunications Equipment Manufacturers (TEMs), such as mobile backhaul equipment and base station manufacturers, immediate access to a high performance and robust IEEE 1588 solution that is both versatile and cost effective.

“With Symmetricom’s high performance, software synchronization technology now available on our PowerQUICC platform, we can offer our customers proven IEEE 1588 technology and turn-key solutions,” said Nikolav Guenov, Portfolio Manager at Freescale Semiconductor, Inc. “With Symmetricom’s expertise and leadership in IEEE 1588 and the synchronization space, we look forward to collaborating with them on future designs.”

The Symmetricom SCi 2000 reference design board has been fully verified on the Freescale PowerQUICC MPC8313 platform enabling network equipment manufacturers to facilitate deployment in real networks, subject to disruptions related to traffic spikes and packet delay variation.

The Freescale PowerQUICC family offers high CPU performance, comprehensive integration and high-speed interfaces, making it suitable for a wide variety of network applications. This solution is being showcased at this week’s Freescale Technology Forum Americas in Orlando, Florida. The Freescale Technology Forum Americas includes a comprehensive technology lab and demo showcase to enable the exchange of ideas and solutions with industry experts, Freescale customers and partners.

“As network bandwidth needs increase, our operators are rapidly migrating to an IP (Ethernet) infrastructure. However, this has resulted in new design challenges for NEMs to provide high performance sync solutions while controlling costs, power consumption and board space,” said Rajendra Datta, director of marketing at Symmetricom.

“By partnering with Freescale, we can offer NEMs a more cost effective, power-efficient reference design board that is proven and ready to deploy. We look forward to providing our customers more synchronization solutions that will enhance and expand this capability to meet the growing demands of today’s networks and base stations.”

The Symmetricom SCi 2000 soft client reference design contains high performance servo algorithms that can mitigate the effects of network traffic and heterogeneous network equipment to meet stringent timing and synchronization mask requirements of communications networks. A software-centric solution, the SCi 2000 reference design leverages existing hardware that exists on most designs, eliminating the need for custom silicon products.