Advanced TCA

 

AdvancedTCA Specifications Aimed at Next Generation Telecommunications Equipment

Introduction

PICMG developed an Advanced Telecommunication Computing Architecture, called AdvancedTCA or ATCA, in order to support the high requirements from the high-end telecommunication industry, especially in the 99.999% system uptime.

 

Attribute   CompactPCI AdvancedTCA
Board size 6U x 160 mm 8U x 280 mm
Distance between modules 0.8“ board pitch 1.2“ board pitch
Board area: 367 cm² 903 cm²
Power consumption per module: 35 - 50 W 150 - 200 W

     

With ATCA we enter a new era. With support for multiple CPUs on one module, one needs power. And power generates heat, which has to be dissipated. Thermal considerations are for this reason a very important factor in the specification process.

Companies participating in the AdvancedTCA effort have brought a wide range of knowledge of the industry. They include telecommunications equipment manufacturers, board and system level vendors, computer OEMs, software companies and chassis, connector and power supply vendors. 

Review the short form version of the first revision of the AdvancedTCA core specification, PICMG 3.0: AdvancedTCA 3.0 Short Form Specification.

The complete specifications can be obtained from PICMG Europe by using our order form.

Supporting Specifications: System Fabric Plane, SFP

There are currently two SFP specifications: SFP.0 Core and SFP.1 TDM. 
SFP.0 is a layer 2 ½ or “shim” protocol specification for lowoverhead, high-speed generic encapsulation targeted at PICMG 3.1 Ethernet-based modular systems, but also has application for other PICMG 3.x & 2.16 fabric-based systems. SFP.0 is generic in the sense that it can be used to encapsulate all kinds of packet and cell-based traffic (e.g. Time Division Multiplexed (TDM) and Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM)) for transport between blades or chassis on a switched fabric.

SFP.1, also known as I-TDM (Internal TDM), is a companion protocol specification to SFP.0 that is optimized for TDM traffic over high-speed fabrics such as 1 and 10 Gigabit Ethernet (PICMG 3.1), Advanced Switching (PICMG 3.4), Infiniband (PICMG 3.2), etc. SFP.1 and SFP.0 together provide a complete encapsulation for TDM over Ethernet. This provides a functional replacement to the hardware-based H.110 & H.100 buses that existed in older telephony systems.

Review the short form versions of the SFP.0 and SFP.1 specifiations.

More information on AdvancedTCA