May 15, 2009 -- The PCI Industrial Computer Manufacturers Group (PICMG) has announced another specification in the MicroTCA family of open specifications. The Air Cooled Rugged MicroTCA specification extends temperature, shock and vibration ranges, thereby extending the use of the platform beyond its original telecommunications focus to address applications requiring enhanced environmental performance.
With the announcement, PICMG says industries serving the needs of transportation, industrial control, and outdoor communications infrastructure can now take advantage of MicroTCA's small footprint, high compute power and communications bandwidth, and managed architecture.
"MicroTCA is the only small open-computing platform that provides robust high-availability features at low costs," comments Mike Franco, CEO of Microblade and the chair of the PICMG committee that developed the specification. "By ruggedizing this proven architecture, MicroTCA has now been improved and is suitable for a broad range of non-telecom central office applications."
According to a press release, work within PICMG to provide an even more robust MicroTCA platform continues, with members working on a hardened, conduction-cooled version of MicroTCA that is intended for use in military and aerospace applications. The work is expected to be completed later this year. Engineers working in these areas understand the benefits of MicroTCA's managed, high-availability architecture, as the platform can continue to operate in the event of component failures, maintains PICMG.
On the Web:
www.picmg.org
www.microblade.us
