Design Strategies for a Low cost, Flexible, High Capacity, Scalable, Energy Efficient Distributed and Parallel Processing System Configuration for Next Generation Communication Systems

The market trend for next-generation communication systems has been towards miniaturization to meet the stunning ever increasing demand for wireless mobile data leading towards distributed and parallel processing system configurations that are cost effective, flexible, high capacity, energy efficient and scalable. Reducing cost and size while increasing capacity and scalability requires several design paradigm shifts. This ranges from the use of a multicore processor to significantly reduce the device count thus making the system energy efficient by aggregating the processing of multiple time-sensitive application software instances or application servers onto a single multicore device instead of on their own dedicated processors, and for the very first time combining the control and time-sensitive data planes under a single symmetric multi-processing (SMP) partition configuration sharing the same operating system (OS) instance; and the use of an open source non-hard core real time operating system (RTOS) such as SMP Linux with PREEMPT_RT. Since multiple application servers share the same control plane and SMP partition, elaborate recovery mechanisms are needed to ensure that when an application server goes down, other operational application servers are not impacted to ensure high system availability. The multicore device consumes a lot of power. Unless an attempt is made to reduce its power consumption based on the system traffic/usage pattern, the same constant power is consumed by the device throughout the day. This will be a source of higher operational expanse for the service provider. A dynamic power control mechanism is also needed to modulate the operating clock speed of the various cores of the multicore processor depending upon the system load to achieve a 10%-30% reduction in the multicore device power consumption resulting in an energy efficient system that is good for the environment. The significant reduction in device count also result in size or foot print reduction for the communication system that translate into lower site leasing cost where the communication system is physically mounted or deployed, thus resulting in reducing the recurring operational expanse (OPEX) for the service provider.