PICMG consortium ratifies Revision 3.0 of the MicroTCA.0 specification
NewsNovember 07, 2023
WAKEFIELD, Mass. PICMG -- PCI Industrial Computer Manufacturers Group, a leading consortium for the development of open embedded computing specifications -- has ratified Revision 3.0 of the MicroTCA.0 (µTCA.0) specification, a move that addresses urgent bandwidth requirements by defining 100 GbE and PCIe Gen 5 fabrics that improve system performance by four times while also expanding platform thermal design power (TDP), thereby enabling the use of higher-performance processors.
With the revision, users can now select from a range of specification-compliant building blocks and solutions that enable more power per slot for higher transfer rates within µTCA chassis and to external systems and server clusters. Revision 3.0 also lays the groundwork for building next-generation MicroTCA proofs of concept.
According to the PICMG announcement, Revision 3 of MTCA.0 addresses the current and future demands of applications such as machine vision, artificial intelligence (AI), defense, research, instrumentation, wireless communication, and emerging applications like quantum computing.
“Revision 3 of MTCA.0 addresses urgent requirements and thus enables companies to now provide specification-compliant solutions rather than proprietary or custom approaches,” says Heiko Korte of NAT Europe, and the lead of PICMG’s MicroTCA Technical Working Group. “The fact that so many MicroTCA ecosystem suppliers have joined the working group shows the importance of the changes and also underlines the strong interest to make these part of an open specification. “The broad spectrum of participants also ensured that every single agenda item got reviewed from different angles and properly discussed,” he adds.
MicroTCA.0 Revision 3.0-compliant solutions will be available soon, including chassis, MicroTCA carrier hub (MCH), advanced mezzanine card (AMC), rear transition module (RTM), and power modules (PM) products from VadaTech, NAT, AIES, nVent Schroff, and others. The PICMG statement notes that the commitment of existing vendors to continuing the development of µTCA products is joined by increased interest from players in emerging fields like quantum computing, which is a good sign for a healthy life cycle for the open computing specification for years to come.
The MicroTCA.0 Revision 3.0 specification can be accessed at www.picmg.org/product/micro-telecommunications-computing-architecture-base-specification.
