The CompactPCI Serial standard has become a popular platform for a variety of applications requiring modularity, high performance, and symmetric multi-processing. It is being used for a wide range of industrial control, communications, data acquisition, mil/aero, security, and medical applications. Using modern serial interfaces including Ethernet, SATA, and USB 2.0/3.0, CompactPCI Serial provides data transfer rate improvement of about 20x over original CompactPCI.
A technical subcommittee has just completed work on a second revision of this flexible platform. It increases capability by providing direct rear I/O over the P6 connector enabling economical low end solutions. Up to three complete CompactPCI Serial single board computers can co-exist on the same backplane and communicate via Ethernet without the need for bridges or switches. Full mesh systems with up to nine processors are still supported using the appropriate backplane topology. Backwards compatibility with existing CompactPCI and CompactPCI Serial boards is maintained, also via backplane topology.
This new revision is expected to be released in Q4, 2014.
The committee is also working on another document that defines a simple, IPMI-based management subsystem that will be much simpler than the management infrastructure defined for ATCA but will provide basic diagnostic, maintenance, and security functions. This work is expected to be completed by early 2015.
