NOVEL CRATE STANDARD MTCA.4 FOR INDUSTRY AND RESEARCH

MTCA.4 is a novel electronic standard derived from the Telecommunication Computing Architecture (TCA) and championed by the xTCA for physics group, a network of physics research institutes and electronics manufacturers. Its main improvements over the preceding standards MTCA.0-MTCA.3 are enhanced rear I/O connectivity and provisions for improved precision timing. MTCA.4 was released as an official standard by the PCI Industrial Manufacturers Group (PICMG) in 2011. Although the standard is originally physics-driven, it holds promise for applications in many other fields with equally challenging requirements. With substantial funding from the Helmholtz Association for a two-year validation project, DESY currently develops novel, fully MTCA.4-compliant components to lower the barriers to adoption in a wide range of industrial and research use scenarios. Core activities of the project are: refinement, research, market education (web information services, works standard beyond the current PICMG specification (e.g. Zone 3 pin assignment) counteract electro-magnetic interferences and incompatibilit . This paper summarizes intermediate results and lessons learned at project half-time. THE ROAD TO MTCA.4 Explosive growth in the telecommunications industry during the late 1990ies led to the development of a multivendor switching computer platform named Advanced Telecommunications Computing Architecture (ATCA) which was primarily designed for high availability and scalability. ATCA marked a departure form parallel bus topologies and introduced a switched fabric type serial bus system, allowing for data throughput rates of 2.5 TBit/s [1]. ATCA was quickly complemented by a derivative standard named MicroTCA (also MTCA, TCA), originally designed to accommodate some of the smaller ATCA ‘piggy-back’ boards and build more compact and economical systems (MTCA.0). Industrial process control engineers as well as defence contractors quickly realized the potential for their application domains and set out to specify ruggedization features to adapt the new standard to harsh environments (MTCA.1, 2 and 3). Meanwhile, the physics research community had picked up on the capabilities of both ATCA and MTCA and started participating in the further advancement of this standard family through an xTCA for physics interest group. One of the objectives is to build a Low-level Radio Frequency (LLRF) control system for particle accelerators and free electron lasers based on the MTCA standard, which required the addition of enhanced rear side input/output (I/O) connection capabilities as well as improvements regarding internal clock signal distribution to facilitate applications that require precision timing (MTCA.4). DESY has currently taken on a coordinating role in the further development of MTCA.4 components as well as the further advancement of the standard and collaborates closely with MTCA interest groups at SLAC and CERN. Major accelerator facilities worldwide currently evaluate the deployment of MTCA.4-based LLRF systems for extensions or upgrades of existing as well as the initial equipment of new facilities. MTCA.4 TECHNOLOGY ADVANTAGES MTCA.4 has inherited many of the advantages of ATCA, including capabilities for remote monitoring, remote maintenance, hot-swap of components and facilities to duplicate critical components (hot stand-by). It also made the outstanding signal processing performance of ATCA systems more affordable and less demanding in terms of space requirements and energy consumption. In summary, it provides an attractive package for users in search of a small, powerful, precise, versatile, reliable and economical computing platform. MTCA was designed to be highly modular and flexible, as the remainder of this section will demonstrate. Basic Setup MTCA installations vary widely in their configurations, but they all share a common set of basic components: • System Crate (incl. backplane) • Power Supply • Central Processing Unit (CPU) • Memory Controller Hub (MCH) Multivendor-capability is a defining feature of the MTCA standard, so these components are typically supplied by different companies that specialize in one component, respectively. Commercially available system crates and power supplies can currently be scaled up to accommodate a maximum of 12 slots of applicationspecific MTCA board pairs in one shelf. Application-Specific Configurations A viable MTCA installation will comprise further components for signal conditioning, digital/analog and analog/digital conversion, frequency up/down conversion, ___________________________________________ *Work supported by Helmholtz Validation Fund HVF-0016 #thomas.walter@desy.de Proceedings of IPAC2013, Shanghai, China THPWA003 09 Technology Transfer and Industrial Relations T29 Technology Transfer ISBN 978-3-95450-122-9 3633 C op yr ig ht c ○ 20 13 by JA C oW — cc C re at iv e C om m on sA tt ri bu tio n 3. 0 (C C -B Y3. 0)