The Case of MTCA.4: Managing the Introduction of a New Crate Standard at Large Scale Facilities and Beyond

The demands on hardware for control and data acquisition at large-scale research organizations have increased considerably in recent years. In response, modular systems based on the new MTCA.4 standard, jointly developed by large Public Research Organizations and industrial electronics manufacturers, have pushed the boundary of system performance in terms of analog/digital data processing performance, remote management capabilities, timing stability, signal integrity, redundancy and maintainability. Whereas such publicprivate collaborations are not entirely new, novel instruments are in order to test the acceptance of the MTCA.4 standard beyond the physics community, identify gaps in the technology portfolio and align collaborative R&D programs accordingly. We describe the on-going implementation of a time-limited validation project as means towards this end, highlight the challenges encountered so far and present solutions for a sustainable division of labor along the industry value chain.

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