DALLAS -- Mercury Computer Systems,Inc.(Nasdaq: MRCY - News) and Tundra Semiconductor Corporation (TSX: TUN -News)today announced Ensemble, a serial RapidIO® Advanced Telecom ComputingArchitecture (AdvancedTCA®) development system. Demonstrated for thefirst time during the keynote address at the Motorola Smart NetworkDevelopers Forum (SNDF), the Ensemble platform leverages industrystandards including the high-bandwidth, scalable serial RapidIO switchfabric, and AdvancedTCA, to enable telecom equipment manufacturers tostart their next-generation infrastructure designs.
"Increased competition in the telecommunications market is forcingservice providers to introduce more sophisticated and user-friendlyservices at an accelerated pace. The market wants a cost-effective andlow-risk solution for the required underlying technology," said MarkSkalabrin, vice president and general manager, OEM Solutions at MercuryComputer Systems. "Mercury developed the Ensemble platform to put thepower and functionality of serial RapidIO into the hands of theequipment providers. Ensemble will enable telecom equipmentmanufacturers to gain valuable application-specific insights into thecapabilities of RapidIO as an embedded fabric architecture that willreduce integration costs and shorten time to market."
The Ensemble platform combines Mercury's serial RapidIO technology andsystem-level expertise with Tundra's parallel RapidIO Tsi500(TM)Multiport Switch, resulting in reduced integration costs, improvedefficiency, and minimal risk for customers as they design and test theirnext-generation applications. Additionally, because Ensemble isstandards-based, it is easily deployed and shortens time to market.Ensemble is an off-the-shelf, multipoint-to-multipoint (full-mesh)architecture. It is capable of supporting the running of up to 15RapidIO endpoints, such as the Motorola PowerQUICC III processors,switched over RapidIO.
"Our customers want a standards-based prototyping platform where theycan benchmark real applications. Ensemble features new technology in aform factor that enables OEMs to readily evaluate the performance andtake their products to market," said Jim Roche, president and CEO ofTundra. "Ensemble demonstrates that RapidIO is the next-generationembedded switch fabric for communications applications."
Tundra Semiconductor Corp.
Mercury Computer Systems Inc.