The evolution of technology and the never-ending thirst for higher bandwidth from industries and applications are pushing the limits of existing standards. The latest processors run faster and integrate more features, thus requiring greater power, more efficient cooling design, and a larger board size. The explosion of bandwidth in enterprise local-area networks (LANs) brought on by the deployment of gigabit Ethernet, 3G/WiMAX mobile communication, and wireless network systems and the growth of triple-play or multi-play network services, have all fueled the demand for servicing greater amounts of data traffic.

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ATCA: Network Solutions
The Advanced Telecommunications Computing Architecture (ATCA), also known as PICMG 3.0, is a new set of open standard specifications defining a common platform for high-performance, next-generation telecom and datacom applications. The goal of the ATCA standard is to provide an open platform standard to meet the needs of telecom infrastructure equipment for the next decade. Over 100 companies and more than 11,000 person-hours went into developing the ATCA specifications during a period of 15 months. Compared to its predecessor, the CompactPCI standard (PICMG 2.0), ATCA offers far greater bandwidth, greater power and cooling capabilities, larger board real estate, the integration of base-level system management, and the removal of parallel buses that may cause a single point of failure. More comparisons are listed in Table 1. The key benefits of the ATCA platform include a faster time to market and lower overall development costs. The specification is defined on modular concept providing for an assortment of building blocks ranging from silicon solutions, boards, chassis, middleware, operating systems, and applications, among others. The benefits to equipment manufacturers are many, as these standards-based building blocks will allow for a lower cost of market entry and investment costs, more efficient inventory management, and a focus on higher value-added differential services while delivering cost-competitive products.