Enabling Any-to-Any Communication for Next-Generation Mobile Networks

Tareq Bustami and Charlie Kawwas from LSI investigate the requirements for enabling any to any communications using an innovative blue[print for next generation mobile networks.

The mobile cellular telecommunications industry closed the 2009 calendar year with 3.6 billion global customers and generating approximately $700 billion in revenues. The cellular telecommunications industry is poised to grow to more than $850 billion by 2012 and serve an estimated 5 billion customers worldwide¹. And while the global economic downturn is serious business, it doesn't appear that its impact will be as serious for the mobile cellular telecommunications industry as some might have expected.

The cellular telecommunications industry as a whole is expected to continue to grow, which is good news for all members of the wireless service domain. There is, however, a caveat: While strong growth in the sector is expected, that growth will occur in one specific area: mobile data. This growth is largely due to the flattening of the voice and Short Message Service (SMS) markets in the developed world as those markets saturate.

Prior to making significant investments to upgrade the mobile telecommunications infrastructure, it is important to analyse technology trends and determine the most effective use of investment resources. Therefore, it is necessary to identify which processors will best support future growth demands. New processor architectures must offer single software support, while incorporating heightened levels of communication security.

One solution is an advanced communication processor architecture, which enables equipment manufacturers and service providers to overcome the challenges associated with future mobile networks.

The solution in question will incorporate a communication processor built on proven, programmable, and scalable elements, and will enable communication companies to increase their share of the estimated $850 billion market.

Market Impact Analysis

Two of the largest forces driving the cellular communications industry are demand for mobile services and mobile broadband access. By analysing mobile applications from two parameters with regard to the underlying processor or CPU, one can see associated trends. One parameter is the CPU core performance based on the application demands. The other parameter is the number of cores or threads that are demanded by the application.

Plotting these two parameters against each other reveals several underlying trends in the processor market. For instance, when the performance-per-core is plotted against the number of cores required for a broad range of devices it reveals that some applications are CPU-bound and require more CPU power.

These CPU-bound applications tend to be the pure control plane applications, such as an xGSN control plane card; however, other applications are threads-bound and require more threads-per-processor. Threads-bound devices tend to be classic data plane-centric applications, such as transport cards in an RNC.

A set of applications that demand a balance of both core performance and number of cores is key to the market. For example, to meet the demands of mobile broadband, an RNC user-plane application requires the right mix of subscriber density, the demand for four to eight cores in a processor, and subscriber peak throughput (with CPU performance greater than 1.5 GHz).

Therefore, future communications processors must incorporate the correct balance of multicore processors and powerful CPU cores.

Challenges of Reinventing the Networking Infrastructure

The mobile communications market requires multicore processors to meet consumer trends. However, today's multicore solutions are narrowly focused and do not provide the performance and flexibility needed to adequately address future communication demands.

What we are seeing is that the capabilities of current communication processors are either control plane-centric or data plane-centric and, therefore, do not effectively meet consumer demand for both mobile services and data-intensive applications.

Security is another challenge facing the mobile industry. Previous generation cell phones transmitted data over private networks using Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) communication. However, mobile communication is transitioning to use public, unprotected, all-IP-based networks.

Therefore, equipment manufacturers and service providers must develop new methods to ensure privacy for their customers. Furthermore, silicon designers must also contribute by incorporating security engines into their designs to protect data transmission over public networks.

Leading the Way by Providing Innovative Solutions

Vendors need to innovate and should be looking at the networking space to address the challenges facing the mobile communication industry. A solution is needed that incorporates proven high-performance computing cores and has processor cores that are built on standardised Instruction Set Architecture (ISA) so that equipment manufacturers can use industry-standard development tools.

The cores need to be compatible with a widely deployed software base and enable a Symmetric Multiprocessing (SMP) architecture, which further supports the development of a portable software architecture.

As well as this the solution should use a system-on-chip (SOC) architecture, which is an ultra-efficient message-passing architecture for intra- and inter- processor communications.

This type of architecture provides the deterministic behaviour essential in next-generation networking applications. Deterministic performance is needed in order to comply with service level agreements (SLAs) where network operators must be able to predict the overall system performance of the networking node irrespective of packet size, system loading, or the type of protocol. Finally, the processors need to be scalable enabling equipment manufacturers to implement the solution on a broad range of network applications.

The asymmetric multicore approach enables the processors not only to complete data and control plane operations but also provides solutions for gateway offloads and enterprise routers that require both multicore and high-performance-per-core capabilities. Working together, all the key sub-components create synergies, which enable equipment manufacturers and service providers to excel in the dynamic mobile communication.

Summary

Analysing the communication industry reveals that mobile consumers are stretching the traditional data plane and control plane capabilities of today's networks. Equipment manufacturers and service providers must develop and install a more robust infrastructure to offer mobile services and virtually unlimited access to online content.

Unfortunately, many existing silicon solutions fall short in supporting future network operator requirements of achieving cost reductions while meeting and exceeding performance targets. Technology providers need to provide solutions that incorporate proven cores, an innovative SOC architecture, and a scalable platform to simplify the transition as the communication market changes - ultimately enabling service providers and equipment manufacturers to excel in the future mobile communications market.

¹ Worldwide Mobile Outlook: The Global Current Economic Downturn: Minor Impediment on the Road to Continued Growth?, IDC, Feb 2009.

LSI Corporation (www.lsi.com) is a leading provider of innovative silicon, systems and software technologies for products which bring people, information and digital content together.

Tareq Bustami is director of the multicore product line, Networking Components Division, within the Semiconductor Solutions Group of LSI Corporation. His current responsibilities include strategic and operational oversight of LSI's next-generation multicore family of processors targeted for the networking space.

Dr Charlie Kawwas is the vice president of sales and marketing for the Semiconductor Solutions Group of LSI Corporation. Prior to his current role, Dr. Kawwas was the Senior Director for Enterprise and Service Provider Marketing at LSI. Before coming to LSI, he was the Leader of Product Line Management for Optical Multi-service Edge portfolio at Nortel Networks.