Steve Wigent
Product Manager Embedded Systems Group

Message from Steve Wigent, Embedded Systems Product Manager

In my ongoing conversations with our customers, it seems one of their most difficult decisions is which hardware platform to use. And with so many metrics influencing the decision such as performance, cost, reliability, and longevity; there is no straightforward answer. We continue to educate our customers on the choices they have and work with them to select the best fit for their application.

CompactPCI® (CPCI) is viewed by some as having a limited horizon. We disagree! It remains a lower-cost and proven technology that continues to offer flexibility for many communications applications. For some markets such as aerospace and defense, CPCI has proven itself as a technology that meets their evolving requirements; while for non-aerospace and defense markets, Performance Technologies breadth of CPCI products continue to offer customers the ability to maintain CPCI systems to protect past investments. Remember . . . almost a decade ago, VME was viewed similarly and it remains widely used today!

Several years ago, AdvancedTCA® (ATCA) was introduced to meet the telecom industry demands for improved reliability, greater density, and high performance. However, since ATCA is a telecom-core centric architecture, the landscape of both vendors and end-users has greatly narrowed since it was first announced.

Within the next 12 months, MicroTCA™ and AdvancedMC™ will emerge as two industry standards of choice as these architectures address a broader market and application base. In addition, they promise to provide much greater flexibility and a lower price point when compared to ATCA.

Regardless of the hardware platform you may be using, a powerful software solution will enable you to bring your products to market faster. Our NexusWare® software suite meets this need. As a carrier-grade Linux® OS and development environment, NexusWare provides you with a common interface regardless of the form factor or hardware used.

We remain committed to your success by designing the solutions and technologies to meet your specific needs. Over the next few months we will continue to add new content to our learning section that will discuss the application of these technologies.

PS. Hungry for more? I encourage you to visit our learning section for more in-depth industry information.

CompactPCI + Ethernet
The Winning Alternative to Aging VMEbus Systems

The PMC531/ 532 offers a flexible set of options for building blade-based solutions for voice coding applications in wireline and wireless telecommunications networks.