[c-nsp] ASR9001 Vs ASR1006

[Saku Ytti]

On 17 May 2016 at 18:57, Gert Doering <gert at greenie.muc.de> wrote:

> Is the line card running the same OS binaries as the RSP?  (I do not
> understand the architecture well enough, and haven't seen any docs that
> go into such details).

I don't know if it's exactly the same, but both RSP and LC run QNX.
Unlike say JNPR where linecards run their own OS.

> Otherwise, shipping 32bit "workers" to the line cards while having
> XR with reasonable software upgrade functionality on the RSP (64bit,
> if that's what is needed) doesn't seem impossible to me...

Oh certainly not. It wouldn't be impossible to run arbitrary
combination of 32b linux, 64b linux, 32b qnx, 64b qnx. And reasonable
design would pass messages between linecard and RSP in platform
agnostic way, via protobuffers, cap'n proto or heck, even IJSON.

But what is possible and what is commercially viable are not same
things. It's pretty logical for vendors to avoid R&D on technology
which they don't want to sell and instead move those finite R&D
resources on technology which they want to sell.

-- 
  ++ytti