SUPPLEMENT RACKS CABINETS & ENCLOSURES
THE MIGHTY MICROTCA W
Alan Cook, managing director of Foremost Electronics explores the rise of the MicroTCA embedded platform
hen designing embedded systems there are the two inherent challenges
of performance and system stability that have to be contended with, along with commercial limitations. Existing platforms like Industrial PC’s, COM-Systems or eNUC solutions are designed to deliver a certain computing power while keeping the product cost low. These systems, however, are definitely not the right choice for high performance applications such as data acquisition or image processing. In addition to high computing power, such applications require a high grade of availability and easy manageability. To cover these technical and commercial requirements a Commercial-Off-The-Shelf (COTS) system is needed.
The open standard platform MicroTCA is
able to meet these technical requirements and keep the cost within budget while offering the best solution for highly sophisticated applications.
BENEFITS OF MICROTCA COTS systems offer many benefits to their users. MicroTCA is one PICMG standard and describes a modular standard for building high performance switched fabric computer systems in a small form factor. It has its origin from the open standard AdvancedTCA which was initially developed for telecom applications. MicroTCA preserves many of the important philosophies of AdvancedTCA, including basic interconnect topologies for high speed data transfer and the management structure to ensure a high grade of availability. Using open standards enables an application designer to concentrate their development on the application specific part of their product. They don’t need to worry about the infrastructure or environment of the system since this is already defined by the open standard specification. The core specification, MTCA.0, defines the basic system, including backplane, card cage, cooling, power, and management. A variety of different sized AMC modules are supported, allowing the system designer to use as much or as little computing and I/O as necessary. By configuring highly diverse collections of processing and I/O AMCs in a MicroTCA Shelf, many different application architectures can be easily realised.
S8 SEPTEMBER 2017 | ELECTRONICS
at a manageable level. This MTCA system is designed to host
Because of its modularity and flexibility, the MicroTCA standard provides the best infrastructure and environment in almost all markets like in industrial control and automation, test & measurement, traffic control and transportation. Possible applications could be digital video and image processing, automation and machine control systems or electronic signal processing. Another important function of
MicroTCA is the Ethernet hub with the system management. Both functions are covered in the Micro Carrier Hub (MCH) which typically occupies one full-size AMC slot or even two full-size slots in a redundant architecture. The MCH provides the central system management and delivers data switching and hub functionality for the various system fabrics including Gigabit Ethernet (GbE), PCI-Express (PCIe Gen 3) and Serial Rapid I/O (SRIO Gen 2). Further to that the MCH is also able to provide a centralised clock distribution to all AMC’s in the system.
2-SLOT MTCA – HIGH PERFORMANCE IN SMALL FORM FACTOR With all the mentioned features and benefits MicroTCA is one of the best choices for high performance applications. Some applications, however, only require a low number of AMC slots. For these applications the MTCA systems, which are currently available may be oversized and therefore not cost efficient. In order to cover this demand Pentair, along with partner N.A.T., has developed the 2-Slot MicroTCA system with an embedded MCH (eMCH). Both AMC slots can be used for payload boards whilst retaining the switch and enhanced management functionality. This system offers the comprehensive performance of MTCA and keeps the form factor and cost
Figure 1:
NAT embedded micro carrier hub
two mid- or even full-size AMC boards. The card cage is fully EMC shielded, so the slots could be used for any kind of different processor or I/O cards. The fact that this chassis is developed in accordance to the PICMG MTCA.0 (R1.0) specification guaranties a full interoperability with all modules which are compliant to the PICMG AMC.0 (R2.0) specification. This makes it easy for every embedded system designer to create the desired application without worrying about the system infrastructure including cooling, switching and managing. Power supply is also part of this defined
environment. The Power Modules (PM) are usually installed in special designated slots in the chassis occupying valuable space. In this system the PM functionality is put on a mezzanine board behind the backplane, providing 12V and all of the specified power management functions. The included power module supplies 150W, which is more than sufficient to serve the payload boards as well as the embedded MCH and the cooling units. Having the power module mounted on a mezzanine card decreases the required space and consequently the overall cost.
HIGH PERFORMANCE REQUIRES EFFICIENT COOLING One big issue in small form factor applications is heat dissipation. Cooling is one of the most important functions to avoid overheating and ensure the high grade of system availability. In fact, the ambient temperature does have an impact on the lifetime of the components in the system as well as on the AMC modules. Therefore the MTCA system is equipped with a powerful cooling unit, providing a free blowing air flow of more than 2m³ per minute. The integrated air-filter protects the AMCs against dust and dirt and can be replaced easily for service.
The speed of the fans is normally
managed by the MCH. The MCH reads the temperature sensors on the AMCs and in the chassis, and then determines the optimal fan speed. The communication between MCH and cooling unit (CU) usually happens through the IPMB bus. This strategy,
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