Advantech Announces High Performance Server Range & Expands PCIe Adapter Partnerships for Integrated Platform Approach

The CGS servers are NEBS compliant systems with a depth of 20 and add all the features required for deployment by equipment providers in carrier grade environments. The CGS-6000, 2RU SKU supports two Intel Xeon E5-series processors up to 95W, memory densities up to 512GB with ECC, 6 onboard Gigabit Ethernet ports and up to 6 high performance extension slots with 3rd generation PCI Express connectivity. Advanced thermal design and redundant 1500W AC and DC power supplies allow the installation of intelligent, passively cooled yet powerful PCIe cards such as DSP cards for transcoding, transrating or tone generation or active line cards for protocol and session termination. This unique feature set makes the CGS product line a perfect fit for applications such as Soft Switches, Session Border Controllers and Telecom Gateways. The improved throughput offered by the latest generation Intel Xeon technology also allows migration of legacy telecom applications thereby offering improved CAPEX when compared to bladed architectures such as ATCA.

The Optimized IO servers are designed to provide the best PCI Express card density available with up to 6 high power PCIe slots in the 2RU model. Intended for maximum I/O, offload and acceleration, they offer the extended thermal design power and performance features needed to host specialized PCIe cards to complement the most powerful Intel Xeon processors rated at 130W in applicationssuch as real-time video encoding and transcoding, high resolution imaging and high performance analytics.

Advantech’s new High Performance Servers are all designed from the ground up to provide greater robustness and meet more stringent environmental conditions while complying to reduced rack depths where required. Key features such as hot swappable redundant power supplies and fans, advanced carrier grade remote management, and redundant BIOS or firmware images for fail safe updates all bring increased reliability and serviceability advantages to customers.

For equipment providers who need server longevity or require strict BOM control and change management, the new servers are designed for industrial life cycles of between 5 and 7 years and a full range of life cycle management services are available.

Advantech also announced the expansion of their NCG Partner Alliance Program to encompass a broader range of PCIe card manufacturers with a goal of accelerating interoperability testing and ensuring a reliable integration of application-specific payloads.

“We’re taking a complete platform approach with the new high performance server line.” said Peter Marek, senior director x86 solutions, Advantech Networks and Communications Group. “A growing number of solution providers want us to take on the complex system integration and validation services of both Advantech and third party PCIe cards. They also want to leverage our customized COTS framework for full product branding including artwork, packaging and BIOS firmware strings or IDs. That’s why we are enhancing our NCG Partner Alliance Program in four main application areas: media processing and offload, networking, high performance computing and storage adapters.”

In addition to the validation of Digital SignalProcessor, NIC and Intel QuickAssist Accelerator PCIe cards from Advantech, two new partners announced their participation in the program at Interop today: Napatech and PLDA, with other complementary partners to be announced shortly.

Interoperability tests are in progress with Napatech on a range of intelligent adapters for real-time network monitoring and analysis. Napatech helps OEMs to build agile solutions based on high-speed network adapters optimized for low CPU load. Napatech network adapters shown at Interop include transmit capabilities allowing support of Capture/Replay and Traffic Generation applications. This capability has now been extended to 40 Gbps with the NT40E2-1 and NT40E2-4 adapters; both of which will undergo validation testing in Advantech’s labs.

“Napatech customers are facing ever increasing packet processing demands and time-to-market pressures to meet their next-generation performance needs,” said Henrik Brill Jensen, CEO, Napatech. “Our integrated system level platform approach with Advantech will help customers to maximize the off-load of data processing and packet analysis from the CPUs, resulting in more processing power for the application. Customers will also benefit from the integration of carrier-grade products from both companies and leverage global deployment from Advantech’s worldwide integration and logistics centers.”

PLDA also joins Advantech’s ecosystem to facilitate the server-level integration of intellectual property cores and prototyping tools for FPGAs, speeding time-to-market for a growing number of equipment providers with specialized offload and acceleration requirements. PLDA brings FPGA development expertise to the partnership, providing IP cores with a complete set of development tools including drivers, APIs and test benches for their Altera Stratix IV/V and Xilinx Virtex 7 -based adapters.

“PLDA’s partnership with Advantech addresses a growing market trend for integrated system-level solutions. Proven product interoperability means OEM’s can readily integrate tested combinations of hardware and software components with total confidence.” said Stephane Hauradou, VP and co-founder of PLDA. “In a fast paced market this allows them to deliver innovative solutions more rapidly and respond more effectively to emerging customer needs.”