New member of NAT-MCH family launched: NAT-MCH-PHYS80

2014-06-25 – New member of NAT-MCH family launched: NAT-MCH-PHYS80

MCH for Physics or MTCA.4 applications with optical and copper PCIe Uplinks
The most recent member of the NAT-MCH family of products, the NAT-MCH-PHYS80, is addressing the requirements for higher bandwidth to both AMCs and the rear transition slot of the MCH as well as for optcial and copper uplinks in PCIe based MTCA.4 systems, targeting at large control and data acquisition applications.
Based on the NAT-MCH-M4, the double width MCH base board for MicroTCA.4 systems and combined with the special low latency and low jitter clock module NAT-MCH-CLK-PHYS, the new PCIe hub module turns the NAT-MCH-PHYS80 into the most powerful single-slot solution for management and switching that is available for MTCA.4.Special low jitter, low latency clock module for Physics appliances The special clock module NAT-MCH-CLK-PHYS provides a very low jitter and low latency clock as well as an additional PCIe clock. The NAT-MCH-PHYS80 is capable of sourcing an external clock from or delivering an internal clock to two inputs or outputs at the front panel. This allows installations of many MTCA systems to be synchronized to a central clock source in a very elegant and easy to use way.
PCIe Gen3 switch providing optical or copper uplinks and clustering The new PCIe hub module provides an 80-port PCIe Gen3 switch allows each of the 12 AMCsin a MicroTCA.4 system to be connected by a x4 link and additionally provides either two x8 or one x16 optional optical PCIe uplink(s) to external high performance servers or other MTCA.4 systems. The PCIe switch also accomodates higher bandwidths, i.e. x8 or x16, to a reduced number of AMC slots if the backplane provides appropriate connectivity.
Rear Transition Module with Intel® dual or quad Core™ i7 Together with the NAT-MCH-PHYS80, N.A.T. has also launched a revised version of the well known NAT-MCH-RTM, the rear transition module for the MCH. The new NAT-MCH-RTM-RF connects the optionally mounted Intel® dual or quad Core™ i7 Ivy Bridge ComExpress module by a x16 link to the PCIe Gen3 switch. As the fully user accessible Intel® quad Core™ i7 on the NAT-MCH-RTM-RF can act as a PCIe root complex, this x16 PCIe link overcomes the bottle neck between the root complex and many PCIe based I/O payload AMCs which in most MTCA.4 systems are connected by a x4 link only. Moreover, the NAT-MCH-RTM-RF connects the management for a LLRF backplane to the MCH management, the NAT-MCH-PHYS80 can manage both eRTMs as well as uRTMs and the additional power modules (RTM-PM) connected to the LLRF backplane.