Edward P Sayre, Chief Technical Officer, North East Systems Associates

This tutorial will present the technical issues for designers of ATCA* systems, blades, sub-assemblies, and components. The use of the ATCA chassis and backplane package for new telecom designs has been growing at a high rate and offers customization unheard of in closed OEM systems. ATCA also offers reduced development time; reduced total cost of ownership; and sufficient scalability for edge, core, transport, and enterprise systems. Its redundancy, scalability, high-power capability, and multi-gigabit channel architecture will support PCI-Express, serial gigabit Ethernet, Serial RapioIO, Infiniband, and Fibre Channel protocols. The tutorial will be presented in five parts: general ATCA overview, shelf and system management, multi-gigabit fabric architecture and design, power delivery and thermal management, and examples of available application blades and performance.

* The ATCA base specification has been issued under the auspices of the PCI Industrial Computer Manufacturer's Group.