Rochester, NY — (PR excerpt) — A group of industry-leading communications platform and component providers announced today an initiative called Compact Telecommunications Computing Architecture, or “CompactTCA.”

The objective of the proposal is to clearly define an embedded system platform specification, which combines several existing CompactPCI specifications from the PCI Industrial Computer Manufacturers Group (PICMG) into a single standard.

Sponsor companies for the CompactTCA initiative include Force Computers, Motorola Computer Group, Performance Technologies, Pigeon Point Systems, StarGen, and ZNYX Networks. The group expects to propose CompactTCA as a formal PICMG activity in early Q1 2003.

The key element of the CompactTCA specification is that it retains compatibility with most existing CompactPCI/PICMG 2.16 products. CompactTCA ultimately combines several CompactPCI specifications into a single standard, ensuring interoperability and the high availability and scalability attributes of packet-switched technology in the proven, lower-cost CompactPCI/PICMG 2.16 form factor.

The proposed CompactTCA architecture complements AdvancedTCA by featuring PICMG 2.16 packet switching as the primary interconnect, mandatory system management, and elimination of the PCI bus for data transfer. The group will propose several enhancements that maintain backward compatibility with existing CompactPCI/PICMG 2.16 products. Developers will choose CompactTCA or AdvancedTCA based on application requirements, and leverage common features to migrate applications between the two platform standards.

In addition, the CompactTCA specification will permit the use of optional auxiliary data interconnects compliant with PICMG 2.5, PICMG 2.17 and PICMG 2.20. Concurrent use of PICMG 2.15-compliant PMCs and PMC carriers will also be supported as an option.

 
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