Agere NPU platform slashes wireless base station cost

By John Walko
iApplianceWeb
(11/16/02, 02:32:08 AM EDT)

Ascot, UK - Agere Systems has used its latest generation network processor technology to develop a software and hardware platform for wireless infrastructure that the company says will have a major impact on the troubled sectors' costs as well as help deliver quicker feature rich mobile services.

“This approach, which we call Festino Wireless, allows infrastructure equipment suppliers to start writing software code even before they have laid out a board with the different components and sub-systems that are to be used,” Thomas Nindl, manager of Agere's wireline switching applications group told CommsDesign.com.

“Compared to the established way of first architecting a system, doing the board layout and then starting to write code and debugging, we can shave huge costs off the software development costs of an application. And with software related development costs now accounting for 70% of a typical application, this can lead to dramatic savings,” Nindl added.

Agere estimates the Festino Wireless platform can reduce software-related product costs by $25 million, offer 24 times more software related product reliability, and accelerate product development times by more than a year. These results are based on the number of lines of software code that need to be written for a typical wireless infrastructure application.

Based on the PayloadPlus network processor architecture, a complete basestation network interface card was implemented using just 1550 lines of software code. Agere says using a typical competing platform, such an application would likely require more than 37,000 lines of code.

"Wireless equipment manufacturers are taking big risks when they deploy their systems with complicated and expensive technologies," said Nindl. "Software is often a reason why wireless network equipment is out of service. That downtime could cost a wireless service provider a million dollars or more--each day--and they could lose several customers.”

Nindl said Agere has been talking with all the major wireless infrastructure providers about its new approach, and expects one of them to sign up to the concept “in the near future, perhaps within months”.

But he added most of these potential customers -- which includes the likes of Ericsson, Nokia, Motorola, Lucent and Siemens --are generally very reluctant of publicizing that they have contracted to use a platform such as Festino Wireless.

Though the core of the approach is the programmable network processor, Nindl stresses Agere is able to supply most other components needed to implement a total end-to-end prototype solution, including switching chips and aggregation devices.

The platform also builds on Agere's network processor programming languages, application-oriented device application programming interfaces, device-independent functional programming interfaces, and the flexible Festino platform.

And Nindl adds it also squarely addresses an increasingly widespread communications industry sector trend in which, to reduce costs, equipment manufacturers are collapsing and consolidating many different platforms typically used in many different types of equipment into a much smaller number of platforms-in some cases just one. The purpose is to use those platforms in many different types of equipment and applications, such as wireless and digital subscriber line data services.

Festino Wireless enables reuse of the same software for all target applications. Competing solutions are said to require new software to be written for each of the three applications-a more costly, more time consuming, and less flexible and reliable process. The company likens taking its Festino approach to using the same engine and operating system in many different types of cars rather than having to build new hardware and software to create different engines and associated software for the different cars.

The platform “marks a major turning point for the industry in delivering lower cost technology that bolsters my confidence that this telecommunications industry downturn has not quelled fresh innovation”, commented Alan Nogee, senior analyst of wireless component technologies with In-Stat/MDR, a Scottsdale, Arizona-based market research firm. “Customers who buy this solution from Agere are obtaining an inexpensive and versatile insurance policy to cover their hardware and software equipment needs for the next five-to-ten years."

For more information on this story, go to www.agere.com.

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