Economical AdvancedTCA ECO modular system with adjustable features

AdvancedTCA systems are no longer used only in high-performance applications such as in telecommunications and datacoms as an OEM application; new applications from other fields now use AdvancedTCA technology as a platform. Per-slot requirements range from 150W for low-power applications to 500W for the most demanding applications. Optimal price to performance may be obtained by minimising non-essential features and maximising critical ones.

The Schroff AdvancedTCA ECO Modular System is designed to cater to a wide range of customer requirements. Specific aspects such as redundancy, cooling capacity and PEM (Power Entry Module) rating can be easily matched to the requirements of a given application.

A removable fan tray provides optimal cooling of the ECO modular system, featuring six or eight standard fans and delivering a cooling capacity of 250 or 450W per blade respectively. Alternatively, six higher-output fans may be used together to provide cooling of over 500W per blade. With these modular fan drawer options, system cooling capacity and costs can be designed with flexibility. The ECO modular fan tray is fitted below the board cage and connected directly to the backplane.

The Telco alarm panel and the two RJ45 connectors for the shelf manager ports are positioned on the front panel of the fan tray. No separate alarm module is required. With the fan tray in autonomous mode, the system can also be operated without a shelf manager. In this case, the fan controller monitors the air inlet and air outlet temperatures and sets the fan speed accordingly.

Another important objective in the design of the Schroff ECO Modular System is reliable power distribution at an optimal cost. The modular concept of the PEM supports 250 or 500W per slot and a power supply unit with or without redundancy. To achieve this, Pentair developed a PEM board that includes input filtering and two 50A fuses. If not needed, the fuses and filtering can be omitted to save cost. Where 250W per slot is required without redundancy, only one PEM board is necessary. If 250W per slot with redundancy or 500W per slot without redundancy are required, two PEM boards are fitted and for 500 W per slot with redundancy, a total of four boards are used.

The Schroff ECO Modular System is available with two backplane options: a Dual Star version and a Dual-Dual Star version. Both backplanes satisfy the requirements of IEEE 40GBase KR4, i.e. Ethernet with a data transfer rate of 10Gb/s per port and four ports per channel. This gives a total of 40Gb/s between blade and switch (40G backplane). In the case of a Dual-Dual Star backplane, four switches are used. Data can thus be sent via two switches in redundancy mode, resulting in 80Gb/s overall. If the switches are configured for 3+1 redundancy, a data rate of 120Gb/s can be achieved between the blades. The IPMB management bus on both backplanes is bussed.