Chairperson's Message

Ernie Bergstrom
President,
Crystal Cube Consulting

AdvancedTCA and MicroTCA are becoming industry leaders as standard platforms for high-performance telecom applications, with both enjoying greater than expected revenue gains for 2008. These platforms can support the latest processors, the fastest interfaces, and the highest bandwidth and throughput.

Market projections indicate that AdvancedTCA revenues should approach $1 billion this year. Meanwhile, MicroTCA revenues are expected to reach about $ 700 million. Furthermore, many designers working on military/defense, industrial control, process control, instrumentation, medical equipment, broadcasting, storage, and enterprise networking applications are considering these standards for their applications as well.

MicroTCA is attracting a lot of attention as a low-cost solution with impressive performance and processing power, especially in the enterprise market. In meeting customers’ demand for even lower prices, several suppliers have introduced innovations aimed at reducing price points considerably. Currently, we are seeing basic MIcroTCA chassis with MCH and power for around $2,000. This effort to build systems based on small mezzanine cards appears well suited to low-end telecom applications such as gateways, wireless basestations, and telephony equipment. Military contractors are also considering it in ruggedized applications for on-the-ground operations, particularly WiMAX systems.

AdvancedTCA and MicroTCA system designers continue to favor Ethernet as their switch fabric of choice. Its widespread use in networking applications, low cost, and extensive experience and support have moved it to a leadership position, although designers with high-throughput needs are focusing on RapidIO. Other interfaces, such as PCI Express and InfiniBand, will find markets in specialized applications.

The future for AdvancedTCA and MicroTCA is very bright. Once again, I am proud to announce the continuation of our successful annual Awards Program, including hardware, software, infrastructure, and an additional category this year for best unique customer application. So let’s see some great Best of Show applications! To enter your products, simply visit www.advancedTCAsummit.com for details.

In our continuing effort to add value to the AdvancedTCA summit, I’m pleased to announce our first annual hardware and software “xTCASlotFest” demonstration. Participating suppliers will be able to demonstrate interoperability for AdvancedTCA, MicroTCA, AdvancedMC, and related software. You will now be able to see all these platforms interacting successfully, just as end users have been promised. This is your chance to meet with the suppliers who designed the platforms and resolved the challenges.

Please take this opportunity to trade ideas with colleagues and gain new perspectives during presentations from a wide variety of large and small companies. Learn about hardware, software, interconnect, implementations, and applications. Hear from the trade associations and standards groups that are helping build new ecosystems. If you want to be successful designing AdvancedTCA or MicroTCA systems, creating products for them, or applying them in telecom centers or elsewhere, don’t miss this year’s AdvancedTCA Summit. It’s the only place you will find the latest information, the hottest products, and the top experts. See you there!