About WR-ZEN
The White Rabbit ZEN Time Providers (referred to as WR-ZEN in this document) are high performance timing nodes family whose design is based on the Xilinx Serie-7 FPGAs that combines an Artix-FPGA with a Dual-Core ARM.
It is composed of the following products:
- WR-ZEN TP
- WR-ZEN TP-32BNC
- WR-ZEN TP-FL
They are the versatile standalone nodes that provide WR features (i.e., sub-nanosecond time synchronization in a network with thousands of nodes) controlled by a user-friendly Linux OS which runs on a dual ARM processor.
The WR-ZEN easily distributes time and frequency to other equipment by implementing standard timing protocols such as PTP, NTP and IRIG-B. The WR-ZEN combines ultra-stable clocks with low jitter and temperature compensated clock resources to enhance its synchronization accuracy. In addition, it allows integrating FMC cards.
Its robustness to failure is one of its key features thanks to redundant dual power supply and a fanless design.
It is also worth mentioning its ability to support daisy chain configurations in which each WR-ZEN device synchronizes with another WR-ZEN belonging to a higher order in the hierarchy level. At the same time, it provides synchronization to a lower level.
A typical intra-datacenter network topology is shown in the figure below, where the WR-ZEN is working as the grandmaster and is the key element for distributing the timing through WR to each cabinet of the datacenter. Different end nodes are included in the diagram to illustrate the interoperability with different interfaces.
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Intra-datacenter WR network topology
There are different options and licenses which enable specific functionalities of the WR-ZEN. These options are described in the table below:
Options and Licenses available in WR-ZEN
