Joe Pavlat, Editorial Director, OpenSystems Media
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COM Express
This popular standard continues to be updated as improvements and changes to silicon continue. The subcommittee has been focused on support for four 10 G KR interfaces with a new Type 7 pinout. Discussions have revolved around the total number of signals to support the 10 G channels, including interfaces for PHY configuration, LEDs, and [...]
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Hardware Platform Management
The Hardware Platform Management (HPM) subcommittee started work in January 2015 with a focus on enabling the PICMG HPM layer for Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6). See the article “Adding IoT friendliness to AdvancedTCA and related specifications” in the Winter 2015 issue of PICMG Systems and Technology for background on the history and importance of [...]
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Physics activities
The Physics community that developed ATCA 3.8 rear transition module (RTM) extension and MTCA.4 with µRTM is very close to issuing a set of new hardware extensions, called MTCA.4.1, which introduce an additional rear backplane to support both precision analog and digital functions. The backplane supports ancillary rear power modules that can deliver positive and [...]
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MicroTCA and the Advanced Mezzanine Card (AMC)
The “Higher Speed Ethernet Fabrics for MicroTCA.0 and AMC.1” group is working on bringing 40 GbE to MicroTCA systems. The committee is currently working on completing signal-integrity studies across the full interconnect channel. S-parameter models for the backplane and AMC have been developed and simulated; work on the MCH is being completed. Combinations of 90 [...]
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100 G AdvancedTCA
PICMG recently released Revision 3 of the PICMG 3.1 specification, which defines the use of Ethernet (and Fibre Channel) on the AdvancedTCA (ATCA) backplane. This important update increases the backplane bandwidth by 2.5 times, from 40 GB/s to 100 GB/s. ATCA remains the fastest open standard for communications applications; this increased bandwidth is critical for [...]
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PICMG continues to upgrade CompactPCI family of specifications
CompactPCI, first adopted as an open industry standard in 1995, is a very popular standard for a implementing a wide range of communications, industrial automation, instrumentation, and military and aerospace applications. It uses the proven Eurocard 3U and 6U mechanical standards and can be convection or conduction cooled. CompactPCI Express, first introduced in 2005, added PCI Express signaling capability across the backplane while maintaining backwards compatibility with earlier versions of CompactPCI. CompactPCI Express is popular in the same applications as original CompactPCI, and provides higher performance with little or no increase in cost.
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A view from the Summit
Joe recaps November's Advanced/MicroTCA Summit, introduces MicroTCA.4, and says goodbye to an old friend.
