Kontron MicroTCA Carrier Hubs Now Support MTCA.4 Specification

Kontron has announced today that the Kontron MicroTCA Carrier Hubs (MCH) AM4904/AM4910 have been upgraded to include support of the MTCA.4 specification. Offering the MicroTCA enhancements for rear I/O and precision timing, the MCHs are ideally aligned with the requirements of high-speed data acquisition and processing applications.

Target segments include physical research centers and many other high-bandwidth applications that require increased serviceability packed into a compact form factor and feature high levels of performance, bandwidth and availability. By supporting four different high-speed fabric variants, including GbE, sRIO, PCIe and 10 GbE, the new Kontron MicroTCA Carrier Hubs build the backbone of practically all data-intensive MicroTCA-based high-performance applications.

Besides deployment in physics applications, other typical scenarios can be found in telecom markets – including 3G, LTE and network test equipment – and non-telecom markets such as military, medical, test and measurement, as well as in image and video processing applications. To cover the individual application requirements, the modular Kontron AM4904/AM4910 MCHs come in four different versions.

The Kontron AM4904-BASE is a pure Gigabit Ethernet switching version; the Kontron AM4904-PCIE has a combined PCIe mezzanine card and the Kontron AM4904-SRIO features sRIO. For high bandwidth demands, the Kontron AM4910 provides 10 Gigabit Ethernet switching. All the versions provide central management and data switching functionality on a full-size, single-width Advanced Mezzanine Card (AMC) form factor.

Equipped with a powerful 600MHz PowerPC 405EX processor for MCMC functionality and switching management, the MCHs enable highly efficient, redundant system architectures with up to 12 AMCs, two cooling units and four power units. To provide support for various telco clocks, all Kontron AM4904/AM4910 MCHs feature a sophisticated clock implementation and a PCI Express Fabric Clocking distribution.

They also include high-performance features such as wire speed, Enterprise-Class Ethernet switch with Layer 2 switching and Multi-Cast support including full 4K VLANs and Link Aggregation, Quality-of-Service support (QoS). Additionally, a packet classification engine for flexible Access Control Lists is featured. A full set of standard management interfaces including a user-friendly CLI, SNMP, IPMI and web access enable the easy initialization and control of the MCH’s switching and management functionality.

External systems or shelf managers can be connected to the Kontron MCHs via the Ethernet front panel ports. Furthermore, the Kontron MicroTCA Configuration Management Software OMVIU is available for remote monitoring and control of MicroTCA systems.

The Kontron AM4904-BASE/PCIE/SRIO and Kontron AM4910 are ready-to-use in any MicroTCA platform. Kontron already offers a wide range of various MicroTCA integrated platforms tailored to the different application requirements.

The Kontron AM4904/AM4910 MCHs with MTCA.4 support are available with immediate effect.