Network Equipment Providers and Telecommunications carriers are under pressure to deliver higher performance at lower cost. They need to increase operating efficiencies while lowering power consumption, in effect becoming more 'green'. At the same time, they must achieve near 100% uptime as they re-architect their solutions away from proprietary hardware and software to new multi-core architectures to achieve the necessary performance and cost savings.
MontaVista Linux Carrier Grade Edition is a high performance, high availability, commercial-grade Linux development platform for next generation multi-core network architectures. CGE delivers bare metal performance while removing the need for proprietary solutions, lowering complexity and providing the time-to-market benefits and the customizability and control of an open-source Linux development platform. Because CGE supports Linux carrier grade standards, developers can add functionality by including off-the-shelf Linux utilities without worrying about function loss due to incompatibility. Carrier Grade Edition includes a complete development environment that enables engineers to rapidly design new equipment and applications, and is fully supported by MontaVista.
MontaVista Linux Carrier Grade Edition provides multiple options for maximizing the resource utilization of multi-core processors. With both AMP and SMP support, along with new partitioning and virtualization technologies, CGE provides the most flexibility and the highest performance for multi-core applications.
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A complete development platform |
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Partitioning & Virtualization |
CGE provides multiple options for virtualizaiton, depending on your requirements. Linux containers ( image)provide an isolated application space without the need for a complete virtualization solution. The overhead is a fraction of what a hypervisor requires. Where a full virtualization is required, the KVM hypervisor is provided ( image). For Cavium Octeon customers there is also support for the Embedded Multicore Hypervisor (EMVisor), which allows the hardware to be partitioned to CGE as required. |
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Bare Metal Engine™ |
Bare Metal Engine™ (BME) provides a light-weight, configurable run-time environment that delivers RTOS performance, all inside a Linux environment. Based on standard Linux features, BME lets users create a dedicated environment to run Linux processes, providing bare-metal execution and performance in Linux. BME provides multiple configurations, allowing users to choose their own unique balance between system-services and no-overhead performance ( image).
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LTE Wireless Network Support |
CGE provides the maximum performance for next generation LTE wireless networks thorugh its support for specific protocols like SNOW3G, RoHC, and GTP, along with hardware off-loaded encryption and protocol acceleration. |
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Stream Control Transmission Protocol (rfc4960) |
New 4G and LTE wireless networks specifications require SCTP support. SCTP provides full support for multi-homing, giving you the best capabilitieis, combined with the stability and reliability of CGE. By delivering native support CGE frees engineers from having to develop and implement this protocols. |
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IPSEC Protection of SCTP Traffic |
New emerging network standards such as LTE, and LTE Advanced demand IPSEC protection of SCTP traffic |
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OpenSAF Integration |
Provides full integration of the OpenSAF high availability middleware consistent with Service Availability™ Forum specifications. |
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Virtual Routing and Forwarding |
CGE is the only Linux distribution to enable virtual routing and forwarding (VRF) capabilities. VRF allows NEPs and Telecom carriers to use low cost COTS hardware to provide secure network communications, rather than costly proprietary hardware platforms to achieve the same level of functionality. |
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Run-Time Application Patcher |
Available only from MontaVista, the Run-Time Application Patcher gives field engineers the ability to apply a binary patch to a live system while it runs, without incurring any downtime. Engineers can update software, fix bugs, and add new features to a live system without shutting it down or rebooting. |
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Flight Recorder |
When a system fails today, field engineers must wait until the next failure to investigate the first one. Engineers have no way of gathering enough data about what happened before and during a crash to conduct an effective post-crash diagnosis and take corrective action. CGE includes the Flight Recorder, which acts like an airplane black box to track and log system history. It keeps a scheduler history, which provides more information than a crash dump snapshot, and is user-extensible for customized tracking. |
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Field-Safe Application Debugger |
When issues arise in a live carrier grade system, bringing the system offline for debugging is not acceptable. MontaVista Field-Safe Application Debugger debugs a live system without halting execution or affecting services. A field engineer logs into a live system, uses the debugger to set tracepoints, and logs out. The debugger collects execution information and stores it for later retrieval. The debugger's small memory footprint and limited CPU usage have minimal impact on the live system, providing debugging without obstruction, and enabling critical processes to remain online and running to provide the high availability that carriers require. This capability, available only from MontaVista, has been enhanced and is easier to use. |
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Live application core dump |
When field engineers need to perform a core dump to help them debug problems on a running application, MontaVista's live application core dump dramatically reduces the downtime required to make a core dump. With only a short (generally tens to hundreds of milliseconds) stop of the application, this new feature takes a snapshot of the running application. The application can continue running while engineers debug the snapshot to fix the application. MontaVista is the first to offer this capability. |
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Transparent Inter-Process Communication (TIPC) |
Designed for clustered computer environments, the TIPC cluster communications protocol allows designers to create applications that can communicate quickly and reliably with other applications regardless of their location within a cluster. Using TIPC, a process can send messages to a service without having to know the location of the service; so the service location can move. TIPC also provides a basic membership handling to know which nodes are and are not available in the cluster. |
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Integrated real-time response |
Carrier Grade Edition is 100% native Linux with real-time performance features, including MontaVista enhancements plus integrated high resolution nanosecond timers (hrtimers) Additional real-time features include fast mutexes, threaded soft and hard IRQ handlers, and application-level priority inheritance and queuing, providing preemption response latency as low as 50 microseconds. Benchmark tests have proven that MontaVista's integrations of real-time features deliver much lower latency levels than non-MontaVista implementations. |
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Microstate accounting |
For the first time in a commercial Linux product, engineers can accurately measure process and thread utilization on a CPU. CGE performs high-resolution process accounting, so applications can be monitored to anticipate and prevent CPU overload situations. This enables engineers to design automated load balancing and graceful protocol degradation using reliable and accurate CPU load numbers. Engineers can accurately monitor and precisely predict CPU loads, increasing the accuracy of worst-case planning, preventing downtime, and reducing the purchase of backup equipment for traffic surges. Older systems report CPU and thread activities based on statistical sampling estimates, which can be very inaccurate, instead of the actual measurement now enabled by microstate accounting. Microstate accounting in CGE will improve the scalability, reliability, and cost of carrier networks. |
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Integrated development environment |
Carrier Grade Edition includes new runtime components that integrate with MontaVista DevRocket, an Eclipse-based IDE with development tools that enhance productivity for both kernel-level and application-level engineers. Integrated memory leak detection, performance profiling, memory usage analysis, and system tracing combine to accelerate system development and maintenance, and increase system availability. |
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Multicore and SMP support |
CGE supports both single and multi-core processors, and supports equipment built with multiple processing chips as well as synchronous and asynchronous multiprcessing on integrated chips. |
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Carrier standards compliance |
MontaVista Linux CGE is compliant with Carrier Grade Linux Specification 4.0 from the Linux Foundation as well as LSB 3.0 compliant. CGE is also compliant with the SCOPE Alliance Linux Profile, and runs on hardware designed to support the PICMG Advanced Telecommunications Computing Architecture (ATCA) and MicroTCA specifications. CGE supports Intel's Extensible Firmware Initiative (EFI). |
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MontaVista's carrier grade partners |
More than 70 MontaVista partners provide middleware, applications, and tools ready to use in carrier grade network equipment with MontaVista Linux Carrier Grade Edition. |
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