Big turnout at Chinese ATCA forum

The 2004 China PICMG Tech-Forum brought together more than 800 delegates to learn about the latest ATCA developments.

The 2004 China PCI Industrial Computer Manufacturers Group (PICMG) Tech-Forum: Advanced Telecom Computing Architecture (AdvancedTCA) was held successfully by Adlink Technology and the PICMG/PRC association on 27th October in Beijing China.

Adlink, Intel, Alcatel, CCPU, Kontron, NMS, SBS, Wind River, and several local partners exhibited their products and services to promote AdvancedTCA technology in China.

Building on the specification's launch at the end of 2002, the market for AdvancedTCA products could hit US $20 billion by 2007, according to a report by Crystal Cube Consulting and Metz International.

Many wireless carriers proposed upgrading 2.5G networks to 3G next year using ATCA equipment, and the total market size for wireless infrastructure at the edge and core could hit US $7 billion by 2007, the researchers said.

The ATCA specification provides a significant amount of flexibility.

"From a user's standpoint, the purchased platform is ready for application specific software with no need to worry about blade/backplane/switch compatibility", said Jeff Munch, CTO of Adlink and Chair of the AdvancedTCA subcommittee.

He continued: "One of the major opportunities in the future will be the integration of ATCA building blocks into application enabled platforms".

ATCA is the next-generation of telecommunications equipment and is expanding the market for standardised, off-the-shelf, modular platform solutions for carrier grade communications equipment.

The architecture is being selected for a wide range of applications, including optical transport, IP routers, wireless basestations, voice gateways, DSLAMs, softswitches and server farms.

Adlink is one of the original ATCA advocators and devotees, and provides a complete ATCA product line, including shelves, high performance single board computers, to base/fabric interface switches.

At the Beijing forum, innovative applications and solutions focused on the networking and communications markets were demonstrated to delegates.

In the morning session, there were several keynote speeches that discussed AdvancedTCA technology trends and applications.

The on-site showcase demonstrated the remarkable speed at which new products are coming to market and how the exhibitors are delivering on the original promise of high functionality and interoperability.

Deployment of ATCA in telecommunications applications is progressing well and announcements of the penetration of ATCA into data centres is now occurring.

It is expected that military applications might also benefit from ATCA.

The forum brought together over 800 delegates to learn about the latest ATCA developments.

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