Cortina Systems unveils CS7542/CS7522 chips for converged carrier services home gateways

Cortina Systems Inc. has introduced the CS7542 and CS7522 devices, designed to support the delivery of multiple IP-enabled services in a single home gateway platform. The chips support a variety of home interface and system designs, from carrier service gateways that support a variety of converged IP-based services to smart network attached storage (NAS) boxes.

The devices feature a 4,000 DMIPS dual ARM Cortex A9 with dual NEON DSP Extension core to support the high amount of computation a converged IP services platform would require. A gigabit line-rate network engine enables the devices to support enterprise network performance with service-aware QoS capabilities.

The more fully featured CS7542 can accommodate six video streams and offers three GMACs, three interfaces that can be either PCI-e X1 or SATA II (in addition to another SATA II interface), plus an LCD interface, a pair of USB 2.0 and four UARTs with a 16-bit or 32-bit memory interface. The CS7522, for lower cost and lower power applications, offers fewer interfaces and doesn’t support transport streams or LCDs.

“The digital home is in a rapid transition period where a new single service delivery model is needed to meet the growing demands and requirements for digital content and distribution,” said Dr. Stewart Wu, vice president at Cortina Systems. “To ensure the system’s longevity and to support ever increasing bandwidth, Cortina’s CS7542/7522 combines hardware‐accelerated, enterprise‐class, networking performance and security features with a flexible and scalable architecture to enable future value‐added services.”

The devices are sampling now. Wu says that customers have shown particular interest in using the CS7542 for fully featured carrier services gateways that can support IPTV, data services, and in-home wireless mobile access to tablets, smart phones, and other wireless devices.

“Operators around the world are quickly transitioning from basic modems to high‐end IP‐based residential gateways that currently deliver voice, data, video, and mobile, but can also serve as a platform for future services,” commented Jeff Heynen, Directing Analyst, Broadband Access, Infonetics. “Cortina has developed the first scalable platform that easily delivers multi‐stream, HD video, both wired and wireless networking with high reliability, high security, and remote monitoring, as well as troubleshooting capabilities operators require.”