NexusWare™ is a comprehensive, highly integrated, Linux-based development, integration, and management environment. It is intended for system engineers using the Performance Technologies' IPnexus products (CPC388 T1/E1/J1, CPC396 T3/DS3) to build packet-based systems including next-generation wireless and IP telephony systems. The NexusWare software development environment is an important addition to our IPnexus family of network access products.
The philosophy behind NexusWare is to raise the level at which system integration is performed. In the past, systems depended on the conventional PCI bus for integration, forcing a low-level and time consuming process for developing IP telephony and telecom systems. The Ethernet capabilities of IPnexus hardware products, coupled with the strong Linux OS foundation of NexusWare, gives developers a simplified way to design in current PCI-based systems. It also offers a simple and rapid path to evolving systems based on the CompactPCI Packet Switching Backplane (PICMG 2.16 CompactPCI/PSB specification)).
Full Access to Onboard Resources
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| Advanced Communications Subsystems | processor-based independent subsystems, represented by the Performance Technologies IPnexus family of network access and switching subsystems |
| Packet Switching Backplane Capabilities (PICMG 2.16) | creating an Embedded System Area Network (ESAN) using the CompactPCI/Packet Switching Backplane (PICMG 2.16) which "pushes" today's network technology into the chassis (backplane) and leverages the ubiquity of Ethernet/IP |
| Open Development, Integration and Management Environments | offering tools for the system development and management for each independent communications subsystems. NexusWare for the IPnexus products is representative of this |
NexusWare features an integrated suite of carrier-grade device drivers for full access to on-board resources (H.110, Ethernet, PCI, T1/E1/J1) as well as a powerful NexusWare API. As a result, the IPnexus products, with NexusWare integrated drivers communicating over TCP/IP, operate within any host system that supports TCP/IP - without the need of bus-based device drivers. The NexusWare API provides a common interface for application development and allows system integration using either the PCI bus or the CompactPCI® packet-switched backplane architecture.
NexusWare's full Linux OS and development environment includes a pre-ported Linux 2.2.16 kernel, a complete suite of GNU/EGCS cross development tools (CDT), compilers (C, C++), debuggers, profilers, libraries and embedding tools that build software images for the embedded system. A kernel debugger supports development of custom drivers on the target system and utilities are included to make a bootable image in flash memory.
With any Linux OS, general purpose software is open-source and represents a lower cost total protocol solution for customers, or at minimum - a solid protocol baseline for the development of customer specific systems. Characteristic of the Linux open-source model is the ability to easily integrate in-house or third party software needed for the development of telecom and IP telephony systems such as: Media Gateway Control Protocol (MGCP), Session Initiation Protocol (SIP), or H.323.
IPnexus products (in a CompactPCI chassis) are recognized nodes on the network
The IPnexus development environment as seen by the developer
By elevating integration to the system-level rather than the driver-level, and
using TCP/IP as the data transport, integrators are much closer to application
development. This greatly simplifies the design process in both conventional PCI-based
systems and emerging packet-switched backplane-based systems. NexusWare's rich
Linux-based application development environment, complete with IP protocols and
software tools, significantly speeds system integration and ultimately
time-to-market
NexusWare represents the third critical piece in a new paradigm of embedded systems design: