Advanced TCA Research Articles

Design of an AdvancedTCA board management controller (IPMC)

The AdvancedTCA (ATCA) standard has been selected as the hardware platform for the upgrade of the back-end electronics of the CMS and ATLAS experiments of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) . In this context, the electronic systems for experiments group at CERN is running a project to evaluate, specify, design and support xTCA equipment. As part of this project, an Intelligent Platform Management Controller (IPMC) for ATCA blades, based on a commercial solution, has been designed to be used on existing and future ATCA blades. This paper reports on the status of this project presenting the hardware and software developments.

Evaluation of a commercial AdvancedTCA board management controller solution (IPMC)

The MicroTCA (MTCA) and AdvancedTCA (ATCA) industry standards have been selected as the hardware platform for the upgrade of the electronic systems of some of the experiments at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) . In this context, the electronics support group for experiments at CERN is running a project to perform technical evaluations of MTCA and ATCA equipment. As part of this activity, a commercial solution for an Intelligent Platform Management Controller (IPMC), an essential component of any ATCA blade design, is being evaluated. We validated the supported IPMC features, checked the interoperability and adapted the reference design for use on an existing ATCA carrier board.

MicroTCA and AdvancedTCA equipment evaluation and developments for LHC experiments

The MicroTCA (MTCA) and AdvancedTCA (ATCA) industry standards have been selected as the platform for many of the current and planned upgrades of the off-detector electronic systems of two of the LHC experiments at CERN. We present a status update from an ongoing project to evaluate commercial MTCA and ATCA components with particular emphasis on infrastructure equipment such as shelves and power-supplies. Shelves customized for use in the existing LHC rack infrastructure have been tested, and electrical and cooling measurements and simulations were performed. In-house developments for hardware platform management will also be shown.

ATCA Software and Compatibility Test

It is the largest specification effort ever in the history of PICMC association, which contains more than 100 companies participating, to work on ATCA technique. To be named as AdvancedTCA (ATCA), it is officially called PICMG 3.x protocol, which was stipulated by the PICMG organization in Dec, 2002. It is mainly targeted to achieve requirements for the next generation of "carrier grade" equipments, widely now used in telecommunication core or access networks [1].

A Study on Optical Transport Platform on ATCA

In this paper, we discuss a study on Advanced TCA(ATCA) based 40 Gbps level Optical transport platform having 120 Gbps(12, 10 Gbps modules) switching capacity as an OTP based large capacity multi service technology. The ATCA-based OTP(Optical Transport Platform) is composed of OTH(Optical Transport Hierarchy) 10 or 40 Gbps client signal interface module, OTH 10 Gbps transport module, high-rate OTH unit switch, system processor, and can be installed in ATCA platform.

Serial Data Link on Advanced TCA Back Plane

The Advanced TCA is a new standard for a serial back-plane. The Advanced TCA back-plane provides dual star point-to-point serial data links or full mesh serial data links. Dual star topology is useful for a data acquisition system. A possible application for a data acquisition system is proposed. One star connection from a readout module is used for data readout. Another star connection from a trigger module is used for trigger signals. The Advanced TCA can be used for data acquisition systems with no modification of the standard. It provides a reliable power supply system and a powerful cooling system. It will become an important standard in the next generation of data acquisition systems

More MIPS per slot (ATCA or not)

Embedded system designers have always had different targets and constraints from their desktop and server computing counterparts. Power management has a higher priority in embedded systems, a requirement driven either by battery life in portable devices or by heat dissipation limits in compact infrastructure equipment. Today, more than ever, power management is dictating system design and driving trends in electronic components. System architects working on communications infrastructure applications are adopting new approaches to managing power, particularly heat dissipation. One method is to build physically bigger systems, as conveyed by the advanced telecom computing architecture (advanced TCA or ATCA) specification, which can dissipate more heat. An alternative approach consists of maximising the processing power (or MIPS, million instructions per second) within stringent power dissipation limits of each board slot. Smart use of new processor features and technology is enabling low power, small form factor, low-cost and reliable systems. The article describes how chipmakers are using these methods to increase performance while keeping power consumption low.