Definition: AdvancedTCA

(Advanced Telecom Computing Architecture) A carrier grade backplane and interconnect specification developed by PICMG and defined under the PICMG 3.x standards. Designed for industrial strength telecom equipment and datacenter servers, AdvancedTCA cards are 14" high (8U) and may reside in single slot cabinets or cabinets up to 23" wide that hold 16 cards.

AdvancedTCA (ATCA) provides point-to-point, dual star and mesh topologies for Ethernet, Fibre Channel, InfiniBand, StarFabric, PCI Express and Serial RapidIO channels up to a total bandwidth of 2.5 Tbps. The first implementations of AdvancedTCA appeared in 2003.

Mezzanine Cards and Small Form Factor
The Advanced Mezzanine Card (AdvancedMC or AMC) is a daughterboard that is only 3" high and either attaches onto an AdvancedTCA card or plugs directly into a MicroTCA cabinet. AdvancedMC cards and MicroTCA backplanes provide a small form factor version of AdvancedTCA. See PICMG.

An AdvancedTCA "Shelf"

Designed to fit into a 19" wide rack, this shelf (cabinet) from Schroff has 12 ATCA node slots and two hub slots (middle). The hub slots provide a dual star configuration to the nodes. (Image courtesy of Schroff Electronic Solutions.)

The Smaller Form Factor

This PICO-1US is a MicroTCA development and test system from CorEdge Networks. It includes a controller and slots for two single AMC cards or one double-wide card. (Image courtesy of CorEdge Networks, Inc.)