Getting on board

MicroTCA – the latest in a range of specifications from PiCMG – was ratified last year following some18 months of development by more than 95 companies. As such, the specification extends the Telecommunications Computing Architecture (TCA) into the domain of small telecoms systems. But its proponents believe the specification has the potential to find use in medical and industrial control applications, amongst others. “MicroTCA extends PICMG’s coverage of telecom and wireless infrastructure equipment,” said PICMG’s president Joe Pavlat. “PICMG now has open specifications that can be used to build modular equipment from the edge to the core of the network, as well as in other market segments”, he added The MicroTCA (µTCA) specification defines systems that accommodate plug in cards which comply with the Advanced Mezzanine Card (AMC) specification. These cards, originally designed as daughter boards for Advanced TCA applications, can plug directly into a µTCA system backplane. Not only does this expand the market for AMC cards, it also provides an existing supplier base for µTCA. The specification incorporates the system management and fabric features from ATCA into a platform that can scale from small, cost effective systems to highly available redundant systems. In PICMG’s opinion, µTCA brings the robustness and reliability of ATCA to small footprint applications. Basically, µTCA allows AMC cards to change their function from being a mezzanine on an ATCA board to being a mini blades within a new system architecture. AMCs connect with µTCA using a passive backplane and communications between cards is achieved through the MicroTCA Carrier Hub.