NZ firm develops digital recorder

NEC has entrusted ARM technology experts BlueWater Systems with the development of a modern replacement for the ageing and bulky third-party magnetic tape units (MTUs) used within its NEAX telephone exchanges.

The digital unit, designed using Bluewater's Snapper System module, is being deployed to NEAX exchanges in New Zealand and will later be marketed globally by NEC.

The project is Bluewater Systems' largest to date. The company was granted over $300,000 to help fund the project by Technology NZ.

NEC recognised that the switches used by its telecommunications users were still functioning correctly and would remain in use for more years to come. But the MTUs, used as secondary backup storage for exchange software and customer data, needed replacement.

Spare parts were becoming obsolete and replacement tapes impossible to source. Also, as the only mechanical device within the exchange, regular failures were leading to increased maintenance.

Having dismissed other options, such as hard drives and magno-optical solutions because of integration and time-to-deployment issues, NEC contracted Christchurch-based Bluewater Systems to design a modern substitute for the magnetic tape units.

The Bluewater solution was designed using the 'Snapper' system core. Snapper is a ready-to-use ARM-based microprocessor module that combines the performance and low power consumption of the Intel Xscale PXA225 microprocessor with the flexibility of the Altera FPGA.

As the module provided a pre-validated computer system, Bluewater designers avoided building a system from scratch and could start work on the particular demands of the NEAX exchange project. As a result, NEC's requirements for rapid product development and lower overall development costs could be met.

Currently over 170 units of the digital storage unit are being deployed to NEAX exchanges nationwide.