Monthly Archives: June 2015

WAKEFIELD, Mass., June, 2015 – PICMG, the leading standards organization for the communications, military and embedded computer industries, announces support for IPv6 protocols for the popular PICMG 3.X AdvancedTCA© (ATCA©) platform, originally introduced in 2003 to serve the Communication Service Provider and telecom industries.

“IPv6 is the newest version of the ubiquitous Internet Protocol (IP) on which much of modern electronic communication is based. IPv6 solves multiple long term problems with the existing IPv4, including the impending exhaustion of IPv4 addresses, which are only 32 bits in size. The burgeoning Internet of Things (IoT) is making it ever more crucial to continue and accelerate the availability of IPv6, which supports 128-bit addresses,” said Mark Overgaard, Founder and CTO of Pigeon Point Systems, who led the work.

“Though many existing AdvancedTCA (ATCA) applications will continue to use IPv4 for a considerable time, it is crucial for ATCA to allow new applications to make use of IPv6 where appropriate. The Intelligent Platform Management Interface (IPMI, a foundation for the management layer of ATCA) was augmented with IPv6 support in 2013. These new Engineering Change Notices (ECNs) provide the option for that same support in both PICMG 3.0 (the ATCA Base Specification) and PICMG 3.7 (the ATCA Base Extensions Specification),” added Mark.

This new capability is entirely optional and existing compliant systems using the older IPv4 protocol are still compliant. “PICMG is releasing it as Engineering Change Notices (ECN) to the existing revisions of PICMG 3.0 and PICMG 3.7. An ECN is a common industry practice for upgrading capability quickly without the overhead of a major revision change.” noted PICMG President Joe Pavlat

Click below to download the ECNs.

ECN001 for PICMG 3.0 Revision 3.0

ECN001 for PICMG 3.7 Revision 1.0

PICMG has just released Engineering Change Notices (ECNs) for the PICMG 3.0 AdvancedTCA Base Specification and the PICMG 3.7 AdvancedTCA Base Extensions Specification.

AdvancedTCA was originally specified to use 32 bit IP addresses according to the IPv4 protocol. IPv4 supports 4 billion distinct IP addresses and in the emerging world of Internet of Everything and billions of interconnected devices, this is not enough. IPv6 uses 128 bit addresses, so more than 3.4 times ten-to-the-thirty-eighth power devices can be directly addressed.

Engineering Change Notices are a method PICMG uses to make permanent, binding changes to a specification without releasing a new revision. Once released, they become part of an existing specification. The IPv6 feature is completely optional and does not affect backwards compatibility in any way. All existing compliant ATCA systems will remain so. New systems can choose to implement this feature or not.

ECN001 for PICMG 3.0 Revision 3.0 may be downloaded here.

ECN001 for PICMG 3.7 Revision 1.0 may be downloaded here.

Chris Ciufo, Editor-in-Chief for embedded content at Extension Media recently interviewed PICMG President Joe Pavlat about the state of ATCA, 100G signaling, software trends and the fundamentally different needs of the Communication Service Providers that serve the telecom market and the Enterprise Service Providers that deliver services to companies like Amazon, Facebook, and Yahoo. Joe explained that the ATCA ecosystem is healthy and that the CSP’s believe that, in the future, only about 10% of their equipment needs can be met with commodity “pizza box” hardware. At the same time, the entire ecosystem of equipment builders is facing downward pressure on pricing as everyone is trying to provide more services to more customers at today’s costs.

Click here for the full interview.