Marvell intros Prestera DX products for next-gen service delivery apps

SANTA CLARA, USA: Marvell announced the Marvell Prestera DX4200 series of packet processors that enable highly differentiated service-delivery solutions in the access and aggregation layers for a new generation of converged fixed and mobile networks.

Services such as mobile video, applications and gaming are imposing complex bandwidth management challenges for private and public wireless services, and exploding mobile data usage is forcing significant investments and upgrades in the mobile backhaul environment.

The proliferation of Wi-Fi enabled devices and the drive towards common policy management is also accelerating new deployments of converged solutions in the campus and enterprise networks. The DX4200 family is designed to accelerate service provisioning and improve the deployment and management of these networks while maximizing service and application monetization.

The eighth generation Prestera DX family continues its leadership in highly integrated packet switching and leads its competition by being offered in a 28nm process. Incorporating an advanced System-on-Chip (SoC) for converged wireless and wireline networking, DX4200-based systems enable the integration of multiple network elements into a single entity, thereby reducing infrastructure complexity and enabling better TCO with more active services enablement per watt.

An innovative integration of multi-core ARM CPUs, a carrier grade traffic manager and a flexible IPv6 packet processing pipeline in the DX4200 enable dynamic software defined networking and advanced service virtualization.

As organizations move to the software defined public and private clouds, the Prestera DX enables the graceful transition for advanced service delivery and application-driven resource management capabilities across virtualized environments. Furthermore, with the proliferation of trends such as Ethernet in mobile backhaul, new tunneling and forwarding schemes in the cloud environments, and consumer managed IT markets, the Prestera DX enables campus and enterprise IT administrators to overcome increased security challenges in their own infrastructure.

"As demand for higher service density per watt increases, Marvell is uniquely positioned to offer platforms for the software defined storage, networking, mobile and compute clouds being designed today," said Ramesh Sivakolundu, VP for the Connectivity, Services and Infrastructure Business Unit (CSIBU) at Marvell Semiconductor. "We believe the Prestera DX provides the best platform for services-driven mobile backhaul and carrier Ethernet infrastructures along with application-driven secure access and aggregation layers in datacenter and campus networks."

The DX4200 supports a complete complement of converged service enablers like CAPWAP, MPLS, VPLS, OAM, SPB and Bridge Port Extension, as well as timing and synchronization support. An integrated InterLaken interface also enables the development of transport and circuit switched solutions while leveraging the service enabling paradigms of the DX4200.

The integrated traffic manager offers hierarchical flow based quality of service and massive external buffering enabling tens of thousands of applications and users through unique queuing schemes that insure no variance in user experience across different access models.

Finally, embedded multi-core ARM v7 processors enable a variety of offload capabilities that can be used for real-time analytics, system or module topology management and any other software defined networking solutions with capabilities that extend well beyond OpenFlow 1.3.2.

A simple and efficient programming model enabled by Marvell's eBridging architecture reduces design complexity and system development schedules while accelerating network and service deployment. These advanced features are coupled with line rate performance, highly flexible physical interfaces and a large set of standards-based networking capabilities.

This powerful confluence of capabilities enables creative and efficient solutions for time sensitive, bandwidth-intensive applications and positions DX4200 as the silicon of choice for software defined infrastructure solutions.

The Prestera DX 4200 will sample to lead customers in September 2013. Interested parties can contact their local Marvell representative for further details of the comprehensive system development kit (SDK) and related device collateral of the DX family of products.