Product category:
Boards and Backplanes
News Release from: Molex UK | Subject: Micro-TCA backplane
Edited by the Electronicstalk Editorial
Team on 19 December 2006
Backplane hosts micro-TCA development
Molex has released a micro-TCA backplane and development chassis to allow developers to build and debug micro-TCA designs before going to production.
Molex has released a micro-TCA backplane and development chassis to allow developers to build and debug micro-TCA designs before going to production The backplane has a fully redundant dual star architecture designed to run at 10Gbit/s to facilitate the development of state-of-the-art micro-TCA systems
This article was originally published on Electronicstalk on 26 Jan 2001 at 8.00am (UK)
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"Customers rely on Molex to develop solutions that support architectures with high speed requirements, such as the micro-TCA standard", said Jairo Guerrero, Product Manager for Molex.
"The Molex micro-TCA backplane and development chassis provides customers with a platform to quickly make all necessary decisions involved in configuring their production systems".
The micro-TCA backplane features Molex micro-TCA press-fit edge card connectors that are combined with precise launch geometry, minimising reflections and enabling 10Gbit/s over each differential pair to handle up to 4x the bandwidth of a backplane wired to meet XAUI specifications.
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The micro-TCA backplane also features Micro-Fit 3.0 14-pin, blind-mate fan tray connectors to mate to hot swappable fan trays and ensure complete redundancy.
The micro-TCA backplane uses single-wide AMC cards, is 420 x 12mm in size and bolts into both the Molex micro-TCA development chassis, as well as the Rittal development chassis that is already available in many test labs.
The micro-TCA backplane and development chassis are ideal for developing applications that use off-the-shelf cards to configure systems for telecommunication applications, such as access products, especially FTTX, cellular and WiMAX basestations; industrial and instrumentation applications; and medical applications.
The backplane has four compact slots, allowing either 10 full-height AMC cards (or four compact and eight full-height payload slots).
This gives the micro-TCA backplane a total of 12 AMC slots.
Fabric B on ports 2 and 3 is configured to support SAS or SATA drives in any of the slots, allowing customers to connect processor cards directly to storage drives.
It also features slots for two MCH modules and two power supplies, making it easy to test hand-off features to the alternate MCH or power supply.
The micro-TCA backplane has a FRU ROM (field replaceable unit read only memory) that facilitates communication of all of the important backplane characteristics to the MCH.
By using trace width of 0.10mm, the micro-TCA backplane allows two pairs to route in each channel, minimising the number of layers needed.
Additionally, spacing between pairs is at least 0.25mm to minimise crosstalk.
Molex and Simon Industries will offer the micro-TCA development chassis with the Molex micro-TCA backplane to enable customers to manage the development process.
Measuring only 438 x 181 x 254mm, the micro-TCA development chassis is believed to be the smallest, fully featured micro-TCA development platform available.
This micro-TCA development chassis is well-suited for developing and debugging micro-TCA systems using single-width AMC modules.
A chassis for double-wide modules can also be offered using the same backplane.
Using the chassis can help in the development of hardware and software, accelerating time to market, as well as enabling developers to evaluate various AMC cards, power supplies, and MCHs.
The micro-TCA development chassis allows full cooling functionality by allowing air to flow from all four sides and exhaust on three sides at the top of the chassis.
It features a slide-out fan tray that includes 10 fans, providing adequate cooling to all of the slots, regardless of card loading, eliminating worries about the absence of front panels.
The cooling unit can cool 40W per slot.
An AC to DC power convertor is included at the rear of the chassis enabling customers to use 110 or 220V at their lab bench or desk.
This power supply is capable of distributing 1200W at 48V to the DC to DC convertors that deliver 12V across the backplane, allowing engineers to evaluate various power supplies, redundancy and fail-over capabilities.
These products are currently available in limited quantities with 4 to 6 week lead times.
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