MicroTCA is an open standard developed by the PCI Industrial Computer Manufacturers Group (PICMG) to reuse AdvancedMCs as “micro blades” plugged directly into a backplane. These “micro blades” offer the same features as AdvancedTCA, such as high speed interconnect, hot swap and Intelligent Platform Management Interface (IPMI), but use less space and power. MicroTCA offers telecom equipment manufacturers an opportunity to re-use the rapidly evolving array of available AdvancedMC hardware and software without modifications to target markets and applications where cost and size constraints limit the use of AdvancedTCA. In addition to the scaleable size and power option MicroTCA also supports scaleable bandwidth up to 40 Gbit/sec and scaleable availability up to five nines (.99999). MicroTCA is designed to be protocol agnostic, thereby able to support a range of protocols including Gigabit Ethernet, PCI Express Advanced Switching, Fibre Channel, SAS, and SATA. The result of the work on the MicroTCA specification is a flexible, scalable serviceable platform complementary to AdvancedTCA that will provide designers with a practical and cost effective means of developing system solutions for a wide range of small form factor, cost-sensitive applications.
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