Sun Microsystems will support Carrier Grade Linux (CGL) on a forthcoming family of servers that will comply with the ATCA (advanced telecom computing architecture) standard, it says. Sun's adoption of CGL and ATCA affirms that the telecommunications industry is evolving from proprietary systems toward open industry standards.

In recent years, Carrier Grade Linux (CGL) has gained traction in sectors of the telecommunications industry once dominated by Solaris and other proprietary Unix OSes. Telecom software providers that have recently ported application and middleware from Solaris to CGL include Wind River (through support partner Icon Laboratories), Enea, and Elematics.

ATCA (advanced telecommunications architecture, or AdvancedTCA) is an open industry standard for carrier-grade blade servers that, alongside Carrier Grade Linux, has been called the future of the telecommunications equipment industry. The ATCA standard is defined by the PCI Industrial Computer Manufacturers Group (PICMG), which was formed in 2001 by nearly 100 companies that found existing computing standards such as VME and CompactPCI ill-suited to telecom.

Sun's newly announced family of ATCA-compliant Netra servers will be available with AMD processors, as well as Sun's UltraSPARC chips, and Sun will support both CGL and its own proprietary Solaris OS on the devices.

To learn more about Carrier Grade Linux and its emergence as an open industry standard for telecom equipment, be sure not to miss our complete Carrier Grade Linux Hot Topic reading list.

 
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