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Quo vadis MicroTCA?
Potential and Prospects
Even before the MicroTCA specification was issued in summer 2006 an immense level of hype had grown up around the new platform, which grew still further after ratification. Countless press releases, technical articles, advertising campaigns and MicroTCA events and seminars appeared with the aim of introducing users to the new standard and clarifying its complexities. Since then the number of events and press releases has subsided. So what has happened? Has the interest in MicroTCA diminished? Is the new standard not being accepted in the marketplace?
No. Quite the opposite. Those seminars and information events were highly successful and were met with great interest. Users became well informed about the advantages of MicroTCA. The market is now familiar with the new MicroTCA standard. As a result, there is no further need for 'basic' seminars, while information on developments, application examples etc is abundantly available. In order to avoid flooding the market with information, therefore, the manufacturers of MicroTCA products have agreed on an annual cycle for holding events.
Parallel to this, manufacturers of components and solutions for MicroTCA are now engaged in specific projects. Technical details are now discussed with customers on their premises. MicroTCA is taking off! In the past two years most enquiries from users were rather unfocused; they needed to know first of all whether MicroTCA could be a suitable platform for their application. Most of the systems supplied were evaluation systems. Developers wanted to try out the new technology, and in particular the new management.
With the MicroTCA carrier hub (MCH), the power module (PM) and the cooling unit (CU) MicroTCA has defined three new system components that deliver high complexity, particularly in the integrated firmware, and that had to be developed entirely from scratch. Even users who wanted to embark on MicroTCA projects immediately the specification was completed had to wait until these modules were developed and tested. These components have been available as fully functional production items in large quantities (not prototypes) since roughly the middle of last year. Thus the bottleneck for new MicroTCA-based projects has been removed from this aspect also.
The number of inquiries is formidable and the number of prototypes commissioned is increasing almost daily. There are already orders that are now in production quantities or will go into production this year. These projects are in no way restricted to the telecoms sector; they come from every possible market, such as industrial automation, test and measurement, medical technology, transport, high-energy physics and military applications.
There are meanwhile also ways available for smoothing the transition to MicroTCA. So-called MicroTCA hybrid systems, e.g. from Schroff, allow users to work with two technologies in parallel. Here a MicroTCA single-module board cage is integrated into an ordinary 3 U 19" board cage. A special AdvancedMC module that sends PCIe via cables to a special CompactPCI board can thus connect the parallel CompactPCI bus to MicroTCA. Then all existing CompactPCI and PMC I/O boards can also be used in a MicroTCA environment. The result is a solution to the lack of AdvancedMC-based industrial I/O solutions, and it is thus possible to integrate the many existing industrial CompactPCI and PMC I/O solutions into the MicroTCA environment.
At the time of writing the MicroTCA standard is being extended to meet the particularly high demands of harsh operating environments. Particularly in transport and military applications, but also in industrial automation, a high level of shock and vibration resistance is often necessary. PICMG has therefore set up three MicroTCA sub-specifications to take care of these requirements. MicroTCA.1, which defines the solutions for air-cooled AMC.0 modules with higher mechanical and thermal requirements, will be approved shortly. There are already RuggedMicroTCA products ready for mass production that are already being used in the first applications. The introduction of AdvancedMC front panels for RuggedMicroTCA was a further step towards bringing MicroTCA into the industrial environment.
No. Quite the opposite. Those seminars and information events were highly successful and were met with great interest. Users became well informed about the advantages of MicroTCA. The market is now familiar with the new MicroTCA standard. As a result, there is no further need for 'basic' seminars, while information on developments, application examples etc is abundantly available. In order to avoid flooding the market with information, therefore, the manufacturers of MicroTCA products have agreed on an annual cycle for holding events.
Parallel to this, manufacturers of components and solutions for MicroTCA are now engaged in specific projects. Technical details are now discussed with customers on their premises. MicroTCA is taking off! In the past two years most enquiries from users were rather unfocused; they needed to know first of all whether MicroTCA could be a suitable platform for their application. Most of the systems supplied were evaluation systems. Developers wanted to try out the new technology, and in particular the new management.
With the MicroTCA carrier hub (MCH), the power module (PM) and the cooling unit (CU) MicroTCA has defined three new system components that deliver high complexity, particularly in the integrated firmware, and that had to be developed entirely from scratch. Even users who wanted to embark on MicroTCA projects immediately the specification was completed had to wait until these modules were developed and tested. These components have been available as fully functional production items in large quantities (not prototypes) since roughly the middle of last year. Thus the bottleneck for new MicroTCA-based projects has been removed from this aspect also.
The number of inquiries is formidable and the number of prototypes commissioned is increasing almost daily. There are already orders that are now in production quantities or will go into production this year. These projects are in no way restricted to the telecoms sector; they come from every possible market, such as industrial automation, test and measurement, medical technology, transport, high-energy physics and military applications.
There are meanwhile also ways available for smoothing the transition to MicroTCA. So-called MicroTCA hybrid systems, e.g. from Schroff, allow users to work with two technologies in parallel. Here a MicroTCA single-module board cage is integrated into an ordinary 3 U 19" board cage. A special AdvancedMC module that sends PCIe via cables to a special CompactPCI board can thus connect the parallel CompactPCI bus to MicroTCA. Then all existing CompactPCI and PMC I/O boards can also be used in a MicroTCA environment. The result is a solution to the lack of AdvancedMC-based industrial I/O solutions, and it is thus possible to integrate the many existing industrial CompactPCI and PMC I/O solutions into the MicroTCA environment.
At the time of writing the MicroTCA standard is being extended to meet the particularly high demands of harsh operating environments. Particularly in transport and military applications, but also in industrial automation, a high level of shock and vibration resistance is often necessary. PICMG has therefore set up three MicroTCA sub-specifications to take care of these requirements. MicroTCA.1, which defines the solutions for air-cooled AMC.0 modules with higher mechanical and thermal requirements, will be approved shortly. There are already RuggedMicroTCA products ready for mass production that are already being used in the first applications. The introduction of AdvancedMC front panels for RuggedMicroTCA was a further step towards bringing MicroTCA into the industrial environment.
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fa915, 04/2009
