Moving Away from ATCA

Why Some Suppliers Say They Are Swearing Off the Telecom Standard

What It Is

AdvancedTCA, a server chassis architecture that accepts “blades” — or modules — for different functions, got its start in 2002, driven by such companies as Intel Corp., as a way to make servers more standardized, adaptable, highly available and full-featured.

The blades that can plug into an ATCA chassis include computer blades, data I/O blades or advanced mezzanine cards (AMCs) for storage, I/O, accelerators or other functions. Another component of the ATCA architecture is the switch, which handles communications among the various blades. Meanwhile, a shelf manager monitors each blade and takes action if problems crop up.

ATCA, a specification developed by PICMG, a 13-year-old consortium that also developed CompactPCI, can work for just about any application, but some example applications include employing it for IPTV content servers or muxes, or for wireless base station controllers or HLRs.

The concept of ATCA became a hot topic in recent years because it promised to enable service providers and their turnkey suppliers to standardize on one platform for multiple applications, so they could focus on the software and services parts of their businesses — the part that makes them money — rather than getting bogged down in hardware issues.

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