MEN Mikro Elektronik expects the PICMG 2.30 PlusIO standard – the first of the two planned draft standards for CompactPCI Plus – to be officially adopted during the summer of 2009, after the upcoming ballots and possible changes.

MEN Mikro Elektronik would also like to announce that the new CompactPCI PlusIO connectors of 3M, which are backward compatible with CompactPCI, are now available.

PICMG 2.30 is based on the PICMG 2.0 CompactPCI Core specification and defines the migration path from parallel CompactPCI to the serial CompactPCI Plus. For this purpose a new peripheral slot was defined, together with a connector for differential signals with a fast data rate of at least 10GB/s, to support the next-generation serial buses like SATA 3.0, PCIe 2.0, 10GBase-T Ethernet, USB 3.0 etc. These peripheral slots are not only usable for PCI Express extensions for applications with high demands on speed and data transmission rate, but also for hard-drive raids, Ethernet switches or USB-based WiFi solutions.

In practice, existing CompactPCI systems can be extended to hybrid solutions, by supporting the serial buses on a modified J2 connector of the CPU card. A hybrid CPU like this stays 100% compatible to CompactPCI, while the peripheral slots are 100% compatible to CompactPCI Plus.