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ATCA Solutions

Advanced Telecomm Computing Architechture (ATCA) Solutions from Texas Instruments.

Block Diagram

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Clock Recovery Clocking LVDS Serdes and Crosspoint Switches GbE/XAUI PCI and PCIe PCIe Switch Serdes RS-232 Sonet / Optical Transceivers UART USB I2C Digital Power AMC Hot Swap Hot Swap & Inrush Limiting Isolated Supply LED Drivers Memory Power Core & I/O Power Power Supply Supervisor and Sequencer Non-Isolated Module System Power DSP Microcontroller Temperature Sensors

Design Considerations

Advanced Telecom Computing Architecture (ATCA) Solutions can be divided by the zones as defined in the ATCA PICMG 3.0 open standard

Zone 1:

Has specific requirements for delivering dual redundant -48V power feeds to individual boards which may consume up to 200W each. ATCA defines many requirements which are typical for a modern, hot swapped power system. The core subsystems include:

  • 48V Hot Swap operates with wide range of negative voltage to optimize power management for use in nominal -48V systems.
  • Isolated Supply consists of power management devices generating the intermediate voltage for the supply bus.
  • AMC Hot Swap controller generates power to Advanced Mezzanine Cards. additional information
  • Non-Isolated module consists of DC/DC Converters generating the on-board primary voltage supply.
  • The Power Supply block consists of Buck/Boost Converters, Controllers, LDOs and Power Management Units to supply power to various functional blocks. These functions can be realized by Digital Power devices.

The IPMC (Intelligent Platform Management Controller) supports the card management, It consists of a MCU like the MSP430 that accepts the inputs from temperature and other sensors and processes the information for the shelf management. The I2C-protocol is used for communication. It controls LEDs that indicate Power-Up, Power-Down and Stand-by modes.

Zone 2:

Is used for data transport and consists of four interfaces:

  • Base Interface is supported by GbE/XAUI or Ethernet PHYs. Backplane connections are always configured in Dual Star Topology.
  • Fabric Interface supports a data rate of up to 3.125Gbps. Differential signaling is used to reduce the common mode noise. Topologies such as dual star or full mesh among all the boards give a large amount of flexibility.
  • Update Channel Interface provides a data rate of up to 2.5Gbps and comprises of 10 differential signaling pairs in a point to point connection between two boards using OC-48 devices as an example.
  • Synchronization Clock Interface manages the clocking of various devices in the card. There are three discrete frequencies specified by the standard: 8kHz, 19.44 MHz and a user defined frequency <100MHz. TI’s clocking solutions provide low jitter and high performance for ATCA applications.

Zone 3:

Is application specific. It generally consists of Advanced Mezzanine Cards (AMCs) which have a DSP, CPU, FPGA or an ASIC embedded to perform specific tasks. An example payload is shown in this block diagram where the PCIe switch routes the information and a PCI to PCIe bridge is used for compatibility. RS-232 and USB serve as external interfaces.

Application Notes

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Selection and Solution Guides

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Selection Guides

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Tools and Software

Name Part # Company Software/Tool Type
M-LVDS Evaluation Module MLVD20XEVM Texas Instruments Development Boards/EVMs
MSP430 14-Pin Target Board and USB Programmer MSP-FET430U14 Texas Instruments Development Boards/EVMs
MSP430 USB Stick Development Tool EZ430-F2013 Texas Instruments Development Boards/EVMs

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