There are up and coming products for ATCA that are ready to take the industry by storm.  These include orthogonal backplanes, SerDes test units, and 40G ATCA backplanes. The orthogonal concept is a completely different approach to backplane design. Develop with partner Z-Plane Inc, Bustronic has a backplane with the high-speed routing acress the rear of the backplane (see photo example), essentially the z-axis of the board.  With the high-speed signals taken off the backplane and onto rear pluggable “links” that carry point-to-point signals directly, there are virtually no negative stub effects on the backplane. The result is rates of 80-100 Gbps across the backplane.  

Bustronic currently offers SerDes test units for VPX backplanes. With the multi-gigabit speeds in VPX and ATCA, designers will need to test their boards, backplanes, and systems. Whether you are an integrator/end-user or vendor, you need to ensure that the product works properly with clean signals.  The DJ1000/1600 tests the bit error rate (BER) of the backplane, plug-in module or full interconnect path.  It can provide Eye Diagrams and other modules to troubleshoot problems with the system.  Pre-emphasis tuning can also be applied to optimize signal outcomes. VPX version are now available and ATCA versions are on the roadmap.  

The efforts for 40G ATCA backplanes are underway in PICMG and Bustronic is heavily involved. By 40G, we mean 4x channels of 10 Gbps signals. To come up with a standard, the industry is doing a close review of the IEEE 802.3-2008 requirements for 10-Gbit Ethernet Base-KR. The PICMG community needs to come to consensus on what parameters should be specified as part of compliance and what their actual limit values should be. IEEE’s 802.3-ba work on 40G has also hit some snags, especially with regards to crosstalk quantification.  However, progress is being made and late in the year, we should have the issues resolved and provide proven performance at 40G speeds.  

For more info on Bustronic’s upcoming ATCA products, contact our sales team at sales@bustronic.com

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