MontaVista Software announced the next version of its Carrier Grade Linux operating system and development environment today at ITU Telecom, a worldwide telecommunications conference being held this week in Geneva, Switzerland. According to MontaVista, the version 3.1 of its Linux Carrier Grade Edition (CGE) OS adds support for several key emerging industry… standards aimed at high availability and telecommunications applications, and also expands CGE's coverage of IBM's PowerPC processors.

MontaVista says CGE 3.1 will be the first Linux-based OS to combine full support for PICMG Advanced Telecommunications Computing Architecture (AdvancedTCA) version 3.0 along with support for key high availability APIs from the Service Availability (SA) Forum. The company claims CGE 3.1 is also the first Linux OS to begin implementing APIs from the SA Forum's Application Interface Specification (AIS) for clustering.

Other new features of CGE 3.1 are said to include: support for a Native POSIX Thread Library (NPTL); Persistent Device Naming (guaranteeing consistent device naming); SysFS (a standard device driver interface model that supports Persistent Device Naming); and NPTL support (for improved compliance and scalability for POSIX threads). Also, MontaVista says CGI 3.1 is certified on Oracle 9i, Release 2.

According to Glen Seiler, MontaVista director of Product Marketing, CGE builds on key new technologies introduced with the previous release (Version 3.0), some of which are only available from MontaVista, such as online debugging (MontaVista Field Safe Application Debugger) and patching of deployed applications (MontaVista Runtime Application Patcher). Seiler noted that MontaVista has contributed a number of high availability features to the Open Source community, including the OpenIPMI project and the CompactPCI Hot Swap subsystem.

Seiler said that CGE 3.1 is fully compliant with the latest OSDL Carrier Grade Linux Specification (version 1.1) and that the company is working toward compliance with the newly announced OSDL Carrier Grade Linux Requirements Definition 2.0. Additionally, CGE 3.1 supports open modular communications standards such as Advanced TCA 3.x from the PCI Industrial Computer Manufacturers Group (PICMG), and is the first Linux OS to comply with key APIs from the Service Availability Forum's “Application Interface Specification” (AIS).

AIS APIs supported by CGE 3.1 include: the AIS CLM (Cluster Membership) API that provides a mechanism for applications to determine members of a cluster and track membership changes; the AIS AMF (Availability Management Framework) API provides a mechanism for applications to register with the cluster executive; and an Application Heartbeat that complies with the AIS AMF specification.

MontaVista says its CGE Linux OS targets “edge” and “core” telecommunications devices, including soft switches, SGSN and GGSN, and Voice over IP (VoIP) gateways, and other telecommunications applications, and that CGE 3.1 enhances standard Linux with additional real-time, high availability, and high reliability features based on the Open Source Development Lab (OSDL) Carrier Grade Linux specification, and it is designed for deployment in any carrier-grade class environment.

“With a rapidly growing number of major design wins including leading equipment providers such as Alcatel, Iskratel and NEC, MontaVista Linux Carrier Grade Edition has gained strong acceptance in telecommunications,” added Seiler. “CGE addresses the needs of telecommunications equipment manufacturers (TEMs) and networking equipment providers (NEPs), enabling them to meet ever-increasing time-to-market pressures by lowering their cost and accelerating time to deployment.”

Seiler said CGE is also being used outside of traditional telecom applications, such as in equipment testing and airport ground services, by leading companies such as Agilent and CNS Systems. CGE 3.1 now supports more than a dozen reference boards including both Intel Architecture and PowerPC boards from vendors like Force Computers, IBM, Intel, Motorola and RadiSys, he added.

MontaVista plans to release its CGE 3.1 Linux OS during the fourth quarter of this year.

 
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