AdvancedTCA Platform Delivers Blade-Server Modularity

Nov. 29, 2004

AdvancedTCA is shifting into high gear as more hardware becomes available. The SYS-6000 Promentum-Blade Server Platform created by Radisys is a complete solution with a modular blade-server architecture with ATCA-4000 processor blades and ATCA-1000...

William G. Wong

The ATCA-4000 blade packs two 2-GHz Xeon processors, dual Gigabit Ethernet along with an optional hard drive, and dual Fibre Channel interfaces. The ATCA-1000 has PMC slots that can support up to four 933-MHz processors.

Other components in the platform include the ATCA-6000 12U Carrier Grade Shelf, the ATCA-2100 Switch and Control Module, and the ATCA-3000 Disk Storage Module. The ATCA-2100 contains a 28-port, Gigabit Ethernet layer 2/3 nonblocking switch that provides a PICMG 3.0 switch fabric. It also has 2-Gbit Fibre Channel fabric and two PMC sites.

MontaVista's Carrier Grade Linux CGE 3.x provides the software platform. It includes Shelf Management Software and HPI libraries, as well as High Availability Support and Blade/Switch Management. The Promentum Advanced-TCA modules cost between $3000 and $5000, based on configuration.

Radisys Corp.www.radisys.com

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About the Author

William G. Wong | Senior Content Director - Electronic Design and Microwaves & RF

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I earned a Bachelor of Electrical Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology and a Masters in Computer Science from Rutgers University. I still do a bit of programming using everything from C and C++ to Rust and Ada/SPARK. I do a bit of PHP programming for Drupal websites. I have posted a few Drupal modules.

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