Edge hardware requirements also typically include meeting telecom- munications equipment standards such as NEBS in the United States. NEBS Level 3 has strict specifications for fire suppression, thermal margin testing, vibration resistance (earthquakes), airflow patterns, acoustic limits, failover and partial operational requirements, RF emissions and tolerances, and testing/certification requirements.


To add to the complexity, in supporting NFVI’s ability to scale out rap- idly, edge hardware must make optimal use of floor space. While most NFV takes place in central offices and data centers, the real opportunity is at the edge where unfortu- nately space, power distribution, and cooling sys- tems are often limited.


A Carrier System for C-RAN Recognizing the need for innovative edge solutions, Advantech, a global manufacturer of telecom com- puting platforms, has reinvented the carrier-grade blade server. Advantech’s Packetarium* XLc is a scale-out platform that combines AdvancedTCA (ATCA)-like infrastructure and management in a more compact, versatile, and cost-optimized design (Figure 1).


With a shallow depth, straight front-to-rear airflow, and a power consumption of no more than 400 W per rack unit, this highly scalable platform accom- modates the highest density of compute available in a 400 mm-deep 6U carrier-grade chassis. It packs up to 288 powerful Intel®


Xeon® processor cores


within its walls. Designed for industry-standard 19" racks, the Packetarium XLc deploys in data centers, central offices, and network edge sites.


3000


Highest Compute Performance per Kilowatt and Square Foot The Packetarium XLc series features a power rating of 2.4 kW per chassis and 16.8 kW per 42U rack. In a comparison to legacy telecom platforms – ATCA, traditional IT 1U white box server stacks, and Open Compute Project (OCP) approaches in hyperscale data centers – Packetarium XLc deliv- ered the highest compute density per kW and per square foot of floor space (Figure 2).


In this 2015 comparison, Advantech tested the Packetarium XLc’s NFVI performance against other solutions based on a full rack of equipment with a redundant 1 Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) control plane, a redundant 10 GbE data plane, and two redundant cloud control nodes. As a density metric, this com- parison uses the number of cores on an Intel Xeon processor D-1500 product family SKU multiplied by the processor’s frequency. This methodology is an appropriate metric for highly virtualized workloads like NFV, and it removes dependencies on different processor SKUs supported on different platforms.


2500 2500 1500 1000 500 0


2822 904


1512 485


168


Packetarium XLc


101 AdvancedTCA


399 104


Stacked 1U Servers


394 109


Hyperscale Cloud


Technology (Open Compute) Compute Density (Cores x GHz)


Compute Density per rack power (Cores x GHz / kW)


Figure 2.


This chart shows the results of a November 2015 comparison based on Advantech calculations of the Packetarium XLc’s NFVI performance against three other solutions. The comparison was based on a full rack of equipment with a redundant 1 Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) control plane, a redundant 10 GbE data plane, and two redundant cloud control nodes.


intel.com/embedded-innovator | Embedded Innovator | 13th Edition | 2016 | 11


Compute Density per rack power (Cores x GHz / kW)


The power budget is based on the consumption of a full rack and does not include the overhead and losses incurred by facility-level power distribution and cooling because these vary. Similarly, the floor space includes only the rack itself and does not include aisle and supporting infrastructure space.


Designed for Network Functions Virtualization A fundamental principle of telecom networks is the separation of control and data planes. The ability to control network elements and


Figure 1.


Advantech’s Packetarium* XLc carrier-grade blade server combines AdvancedTCA (ATCA)-like infrastructure and management in a more compact, versatile, cost-optimized design.


Compute Density Comparison 2722 2074


1000 800 600 400 200 0


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52  |  Page 53  |  Page 54  |  Page 55  |  Page 56  |  Page 57  |  Page 58  |  Page 59  |  Page 60  |  Page 61  |  Page 62  |  Page 63  |  Page 64  |  Page 65  |  Page 66  |  Page 67  |  Page 68