New Products

General Information
March 16, 2007 • Vol.29 Issue 11Page(s) 17 in print issue

Dual-Core Platforms For Security & Communications Appliances

American Portwell Offers Compact, Cost-Effective Hardware Choices

American Portwell NAR-7090 & NAR-5620/5622 (7090 shown)

NAR-7090: Starts at about $2,000 NAR-5620/5622: Start at about $1,500

Compact, high-performance platforms for appliance-oriented software vendors

www.Processor.com/NAR-7090

www.Processor.com/NAR-5620

Many companies like to buy communications, network, and security applications as appliances. But few software vendors want to also be in the hardware business, instead turning to system manufacturers such as American Portwell, Advantech (www.Processor.com/AdvantechCorp), and Intel (http://www.intel.com/) or to system-level manufacturers and integrators.

American Portwell Technology’s new members of its Communication Appliance product line—the NAR-7090 and NAR-5620/5622—address what the company sees is the need for high-performance hardware in smaller form factors, and they’re capable of using less power.

“Our typical customers are software vendors,” says Frank Shen, American Portwell’s product marketing director. “We can even install software vendors’ software and drop-ship the boxes to their customers, so the software companies don’t need to touch the hardware or the logistics side.”

The NAR-7090 is a 2U appliance built on Intel’s 5000P chipset and has sockets for two dual-core Intel Xeon 64-bit processors, a 1,333MHz frontside bus, and up to 14 Gigabit Ethernet ports.

Uses for the NAR-7090, says Shen, include enterprise networking security applications such as Network Access Control, unified threat management appliances, voice/data/image “triple-play” applications, media gateways, and WAN optimization. “The 7090 is a high-end platform, good for applications which need high throughput,” says Shen.

In addition to the NAR-7090, American Portwell announced its NAR-5620 and NAR-5622 communication appliance platforms, intended for use by medium-sized and large businesses.

The NAR-5620/5622 series of 1U appliance platforms uses Intel’s 3100 chipset, which can support Intel’s Core Duo, Pentium M, or Celeron M mobile processors; includes two PCI32 GbE ports; and can be configured with up to six PCI-E SFP connectors or eight PCI-E copper ports. (The 5622 includes an additional Ethernet module.) The NAR-5620/5622 use DDR-2 400 memory, making them appropriate for application buffering and for memory-intensive applications.

Samples of the NAR-7090 and NAR-5620/5622 appliances are available for OEMs, according to Shen. Quantity prices (typically for 100 or more units per order) for the NAR-7090 start around $2,000 for a barebones system with no CPU or memory and only basic Ethernet ports; a fully loaded system could run closer to $7,000. Prices for the NAR-5620/5622 range from around $1,500 (barebones) to $4,000 (fully loaded), Shen says.

Competition, according to Shen, includes platform vendors such as Intel and Advantech. He notes, “There are also server motherboard vendors, who provide a board, and somebody else provides the chassis to integrate it. We own our own manufacturing, so we can work with customers to meet their specifications.”

by Daniel P. Dern