Advanced Telecommunications Computing Architecture

Mechanical Specifications

12U 14 Slot AdvancedTCA® Shelf
An AdvancedTCA board (blade) is 280 mm deep and 322 mm high. The boards have a metal front panel and a metal cover on the bottom of the Printed circuit board to limit Electromagnetic interference and to limit the spread of fire. The locking injector/ejector handle (lever) actuates a microswitch to let the Intelligent Platform Management Controller (IPMC) know that an operator wants to remove a board, or that the board has just been installed, thus activating the hot-swap procedure. AdvancedTCA boards support the use of PMC or AMC expansion mezzanines.
The shelf supports RTMs (Rear Transition Modules). RTMs plug into the back of the shelf in slot locations that match the Front Boards. The RTM and the Front Board are interconnected through a Zone-3 connector. The Zone-3 connector is not defined by the AdvancedTCA specification.
Each shelf slot is 30.48 mm wide. This allows for 14 boards chassis to be installed in a 19" rack mountable system and 16 boards in an ETSI rack mountable system. A typical 14 slot system is 12U or 13U rack units high. The large AdvancedTCA shelves are targeted to the Telecommunication market so the airflow goes in the front of the shelf, across the boards from bottom to top, and out the rear of the shelf. Smaller shelves that are used in Enterprise applications typically have horizontal air flow.
The small-medium AdvancedTCA shelves are targeted to the Telecommunication market, for the lab research operation, some shelves have an open cover in order to make testing more easy.
ATCA-300 is a version of ATCA that is intended to be installed in 300 mm deep cabinets. The board (blade) is 220 mm deep and 322 mm high. There are no RTMs instead there are FTM (Front Transition Modules), the FTM can be located on the top or at the sides of the chassis