Product category:
Design and Development Hardware
News Release from: Kontron UK | Subject: MicroTCA development system
Edited by the Electronicstalk Editorial
Team on 07 April 2006
System points to MicroTCA development
A new development system is based on the soon-to-be ratified PICMG MicroTCA specification.
Kontron has released a new development system based on the soon-to-be ratified PICMG MicroTCA specification The MicroTCA system, which supports PCI-Express, embodies the long-term strategic plans for Kontron to leverage its existing open modular platforms of AdvancedTCA and AdvancedMC building blocks with the highly complementary new open standard
This article was originally published on Electronicstalk on 8 Nov 2004 at 8.00am (UK)
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The MicroTCA standard features a smaller and more economical footprint, whereby a MicroTCA chassis uses AdvancedMC modules connected directly on the backplane.
With a choice of existing Kontron processor, I/O and storage AdvancedMC modules, MicroTCA platforms have tremendous potential for WiMAX access points, DSLAMs, VoIP access gateways and IP-PBX applications, among others.
Whereas its AdvancedTCA counterpart was created primarily for the communications market, MicroTCA offers opportunities for other market applications such as medical and industrial imaging, defence communications and any environment that requires high density server farms or intensive I/O processing in smaller and more cost-efficient footprints.
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"As an active PICMG participant in the formation of the MicroTCA standard, Kontron firmly believes in its long-term market potential", said Norbert Hauser, Vice President Marketing, Kontron.
"The effort by the PICMG community to leverage the harmonising work of the AdvancedTCA, AdvancedMC and now the MicroTCA open standards will continue to be extremely attractive to communications equipment manufacturers who seek higher cost-efficiencies and very competitive time to market product cycles".
"MicroTCA will be used in a wide range of applications, across the telecom, military, medical and industrial markets, that require the carrier class capabilities of AdvancedTCA on a smaller platform", said Simon Stanley, Principal Consultant at Earlswood Marketing.
"The rapid growth in the number of AdvancedMC cards used in both AdvancedTCA and MicroTCA will shorten the time to market with the first MicroTCA systems becoming available during 2007".
With hot-swap support and autonomous system management - like AdvancedTCA - as well as switched fabric functionality, MicroTCA is ideally adapted for both enterprise and carrier-grade access network applications.
A long-standing Kontron strategy has been to demonstrate the advantages of its AMCeverywhere approach of employing AdvancedMC modules with processor, switch and carrier AdvancedTCA boards.
As the smallest field-replaceable units on the market, AdvancedMCs offer extended granularity of the system architecture and are ideally suited to scaling, standardisation, and customisation due to its modular approach.
With the possibility to now leverage the uniqueness of AdvancedMCs in independent MicroTCA systems, network equipment providers can achieve incredible economies of scale.
MicroTCA also does not incur additional development costs as it is based on the same architecture as AdvancedTCA and supports the identical Intelligent Platform Management Interface (IPMI) found in AdvancedTCA to provide power management and system monitoring.
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